The Scintillating Successes of Scrapzilla

So, I didn't think I was going to post one of those "day in the life" threads, but I had such a great say today and just had to share!

It started out a little slow. The weather was great for yard work, so we went to the scrap yard to clear off the trailer (we are neighborhood dwellers, our scrap can't really hang around long.) Our shredder only brought $60, but that was gas money for some curb shopping!

Our curb shopping didn't really yield too much -- a gas grill, an aluminum door frame, and a crazy heavy weight bench thingie. We headed home knowing that we had covered our gas, but not very excited.

Shortly after we got home, Mr. Scrapzilla had a text regarding our Craigslist ad. A lady had some aluminum patio chairs for us across town--not really worth going for, but necessary for great customer service (this was only our second Craigslist response!) The lady was very nice and promised to call us again when she needed to get rid of anything. The chairs are probably about 60 lbs of aluminum--not great, but enough to cover our trip.

But wait...that wasn't the exciting part! We headed over to Subway next for some dinner on the way home. As I walked in the door, I noticed an interesting hunk of metal by the door. I ended up walking in Subway with $16 cash (had to scrounge around in the center console to keep from having to use plastic!) and left with $0.07, 2 foot longs, and an eight foot, stainless steel cold holding table!

That's right! 10 ft for $15.93! Best deal I've ever encountered at Subway before! I was a little hesitant to ask about the table because I know they are super expensive, but you never know unless you ask! It really taught me a lesson!

I didn't really get a good look at it in the dark, but I know that the compressor has been removed (the guy offered it to me for $500, no thanks!) We have a couple of restaurant supply stores in town that sell used equipment, I'll shop it around to them Monday, but I have a feeling that the lack of compressor will be offputting. I will probably end up breaking it down and scrapping it (it was at least 350-400 lbs.)

Has anyone had any experience with one of these? If so, how did you do?

Love to see a pix of that and more details why they gave it up so cheap!!

I'll take a pic in the morning when we drag it off the trailer. It was 10 pm by the time we got home with it. Think about any "make it in front of you" sub shop that you have ever been in--it is the table with all of the sandwich fixings in little bins where the employee prepares your food.

The gentleman kept saying that it was "very heavy, very heavy," "need some men and a truck," etc. I just don't think that they were experienced or used to moving stuff like that. It sounds like the table wasn't holding temperature, so they tried to repair it, then just ended up replacing it. I almost believe that the Health Department may have been involved.

Last time I saw, my non-ferrous guy was paying 50 cents a pound for stainless. Don't know what he would say if I rolled in with a 200+ lb. table but it might be interesting to see :cool:

The compressor and should be on a tray in the bottom held on by 4 screws , the last one I had was not stainless but yielded me $30 in shred after I removed the compressor . Saddest part was I had the radiator out and was taking the sawzaw to it before I realized he entire thing was steel even the loops that are usually copper inside the radiator . Still great find will certainly pay for your meal .

Alright, so this morning we decided to tackle the beast! After a little bit of contemplatiom and inspection, we decided that the table wasn't complete enough to be resold, so it was rime to break it down for scrap. It was a real bugger! Probably took the two of us about 2 hours (Mr. Scrapzilla manhandling, me handing tools mostly.)

The table base is just shred and we immediately set it to the side. The table top was a big piece of stainless and the three slots (where the little containers of food sat) were also stainless. Removing those "slots" was the most time consuming part of the job. It involved the use of a grinder and a 6 ft pry bar.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps379bb9ff.jpg

The table still in the trailer. Y'all should've seen us getting that thing in there!

We weren't really sure what kind of cooling mechanism would be contained in the table top. We kind of expected a couple of coils, similar to an AC. Boy, were we surprised!

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps63b506c4.jpg

Horrible picture, but those are 8 ft long pieces of copper tubing! Yay! That made our day!

So, we ended up with a big chunk of shredder...

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps54fa1428.jpg

Maybe 250 lbs? 300? Don't know, will find out tomorrow. Also the pile of copper...

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3af22042.jpg

And a nice little stack of stainless! Don't know how we will end up, but I'm not disappointed!

Cool!!

Final tally:

127 lbs of stainless for $60
62 lbs of aluminum for $31 (the patio chairs!)
880 lbs of shredder $70 (all of my curbshopping shredder for the weekend)

Not a bad weekend's work! Now i just have to figure out when i get a day off!