Used to scrap looking back into it.

Originally Posted by hills

It's just a thought.

Some places are around .25/lb for aluminum. It would take 400 lbs of aluminum just to make a hundred dollar bill.

It would take a ton of aluminum just to make one 500.00$ rent payment.

It's hard times for a lot of folks these days ... that's understood. Don't want to be any more discouraging but scrappin' probably won't do it for you.

Better to know now than later i guess.

Probably the reason you work a real job

Originally Posted by hills

Yeah ... i don't know anyone IRL that's doing it full time. The expectation in this area is that you pick up an extra fifty or a hundred every now and then. It's just a side gig and not your prime income source.

Probably much the same for most of the people here on the forum as well.

I think you missed the point.....You have commented before that dismantling some scrap was beneath you (THIRD WORLD WORK YOU CALLED IT)........Us that actually rely on this for a living do what is required and those that can't make a living doing this get a job

Originally Posted by hills

Mike:

I think somebody has a wild hair across his backside. Got the crankies or what ? Heat getting to you and making you irritable ?

We might have been talking about power supplies if i recall. We all have a certain cost of living here in the states. You HAVE to be making X amount of dollars per month just to break even. Good for you if you can ... but i certainly couldn't make a living at breaking those things down.

If what i was saying had no merit ... you would just blow it off and forget about it.

If there's a grain of truth that you don't want to deal with ... you are apt to react strongly to it.

Maybe things aren't going very well for you ?

Lol.....it doesn't bother me to work like a 3rd world person I even joke about it with family and friends.....once again you missed the point.....you are not the guy to be giving OP advice because you are not doing this for a living

Originally Posted by mikeinreco

I think you missed the point.....You have commented before that dismantling some scrap was beneath you (THIRD WORLD WORK YOU CALLED IT)........Us that actually rely on this for a living do what is required and those that can't make a living doing this get a job

If I take the amount of time I spend taking apart escrap and the amount of money I get from selling it after all expenses, I think my hourly wage would be around $2/hr, by my most optimistic estimates. That is essentially a third world wage.

With more contacts, more material, better tools, etc, I'm sure the profit margin would be better, and if you're doing this for a living, I'm sure it works out to a much better hourly wage. But for most people, I'm am assuming if we take all the scrappers out there, and average out their hourly wage, it would be closer to the third world wage than a livable wage, even if there are a few people who can make a living at it.

Additionally, I'm sure the people's making a living at scrapping, aren't just scrapping, they're probably also doing cleanouts, junk removal, reselling, transporting/moving, and/or other things that supplement income other than pure scrapping.

Scrapping is the lowest denominator of an items value, it squeezes out the last drops of value out of items when there is no other value left in the item.

If you are making a living at this, I commend/respect you, but if you have alternative employment, making a decent wage, it would be quite a bit of work to replace normal employment wage, with scrap.

for full disclosure I am comparing this to MY full-time job, others with other salaries/jobs may think/feel different, but I dont think I could ever REPLACE my fulltime wage with scrapping unless I started my own scrapyard or found a honey-pot of good scrap that I could get for nothing.


Edit: I over estimated my hours spent vs what I actually have in my work log. Before taxes Im actually around $9.25/hr thus far... which isnt nearly as bad as I thought, but still only barely a livable wage in my opinion....