Well, my payday stunk

I took in my grand load Friday, 14 bags of crushed cans (79#) clean computer harddrive cases/clean AL heatsinks (71#) and some mixed heatsinks rad/copper (18#) brought me $95.76.. Guess I was expecting a little more.. Ah well.

what are they paying per lb?

Your take sounds about right. Cans and clean al are normally around 0.50 lb and cu-al rads are just over a dollar if i remember correctly.

cans $.50 (that one I expected though the weight was a tad on the light side IMHO) Cast Al was at $.55 and the Rad/copper was $1.00. (how a full (make that overflowing)5 gallon bucket of copper/al/ss heat sinks weighed in at 18lbs is beyond me. And yes I should have weighed it before I went (circumstances arose that I was pressed for time loading) I don't think I will be in a great hurry to return to that yard though the prices were better.

Depending on scenario $95 is ok .
Be humble as we know what could be

Back to your situation Not sure how long you have been doing this meaning your join date might not reflect your true time of scrap biz.
But by now or in a little more time you can develop the feel or the touch - - by how it feels to pick up weight and also how auto feels during the drive to yard .

Hey -- you may already have it ( the feel ) and thats why you feel you were not paid proper . I don't think yards will chance a scale off in calibration . But scrappers must always at least let the yard guy think your watching the weigh in .
and if you ever have doubts keep a barbell like a 10 pounder with you to test.

Other then that those prices are the going rate & as long as weight was proper ,thats the deal and sounds like a decent payday
worthy of the drive to yard , but we all have our view of what value is of our time .

You are correct Copperhead, not going to split hairs over a few pounds and I well could have been in the wrong, cash in hand is best. Gotta keep moving forward.

I took a load in Friday but called and checked prices Thursday and again on my way to the yard. Got there and asked the guy before I unloaded and guess what, what he quoted me was 9 cents a pound less than the lady on the phone. I told him what the correct prices were and said he might want to go to the office to verify. I ended getting the prices I was quoted on the phone.
Know what you have and how much you have. Call before you go and get the name of the person quoting prices. When you get to the yard ask the guys again before you unload.

definetly call ahead. if you are a regular or have decent quanitity listed prices mean nothing. I always call ahead to my salesman on the way in (40 minute drive) with approx rates. some items are .05 more per pound and some are .35 more per pound

now you have a bank roll to buy a pallet of computers and at least double your money is how I look at it that would buy 2 pallets here

Thats about right. My calculations were five bucks lower at our prices so.....

Beats taking in steel. Hey did you try selling the heat sinks on ebay before scrapping them? How about low to mid grade boards? complete working one can sell on ebay or you can go to scrapforcomputercash.com and he'll take 'em.

Yeah, I did a house cleanout recently and worked hard to separate the scrappable items. My 14 foot box truck was mostly full and I got only $43.00. I may as well have not done all the work of separating and just chucked it into the dumpster!