My yard never really updates there pricing?

I’m always lurking on the forums here and I’ve noticed some people talking about there yards updating there pricing weekly, some daily!

My yard I go to will go months without updating pricing. It doesn’t really effect too much as they are pretty much in line with the other yards. They may be down on pricing on some things but the cost in fuel for me to drive farther to another yard doesn’t make up the price difference.

How often does your yard update pricing? Is it unusual my yard doesn’t update frequently?

Not sure where you are (I'm in Indiana) and there are probably more places than I know of, but when I started, it was the result of living in rural Indiana, going through divorce and having a car breaking down more often than I could learn to do repairs (plus the nearest salvage yard to pull parts was 20 miles away). So, there was a place that's pretty big with a branch where I was and I usually take my scrap to them up here too. I've noticed from their price board they don't have a lot of categories, and like you said, the prices have pretty much been the same for months ... pretty much since last fall at least. Cans took a nickel hit lately ( 0.40 vs 0.45/lb, but I figure that is probably because there's frozen fluid in more of them in winter, so they adjust for that). I'm still not super knowledgeable about a lot of metals, but I had some things (non-magnetic) in with scrap aluminum the last time and they were going to weigh it together, but I saw they were paying only 0.10/lb for stainless vs 0.40 for aluminum (plus I saw posts here from various people about different grades of stainless and how some are more valuable) so I took the stainless back for now.

BTW, according to their info : "one of N.America's largest processors and distributors of scrap and secondary metals" and apparently in six states. I know about one other place around here but haven't gone there because they are good with answering questions and patient (and I appreciate that). But the categories I CAN remember off the top of my head have been the same for about a year:

electric motors 0.18/lb
#1 copper (non) !.80/lb
#2 copper (non 1.60/lb
#1 copper (insulated) ??
#2 copper (insulated) 0.20/lb
brass 1.25/lb
sheet or scrap aluminum 0.40/lb
lead ???


There are a couple more categories but not many. And the ones with ??? haven't changed, but I never have those to bring in so I just don't remember off the top of my head. Maybe not too much competition so they keep the prices stable and categories few and they sort some later? since so many posts indicate some things are probably low-balled BUT I can bring in pretty much any sort of wire (telephone, computer, christmas lights, etc), insulated, and not have to figure it out and get the same price, that aspect is nice. And WAY back before I knew about that copper steel stuff that is in some coax, I took some in with my copper but they paid me copper price. That was a bummer, because I had found a whole roll of that stuff, brought it home and now had to get rid of it once I learned about it NOT being real copper. So I guess they lose here and there. That was pretty mortifying because someone said something when it was being weighed but they didn't question it or anything; when I went home I took a magnet to it and found out it was magnetic. I hadn't had much in there (one of those days when I was pretty low on cash and just wanted to get there before closing) as I was concentrating on stripping the thickest stuff and had only stripped a little of that to see how fast it would be.

Steel prices generally change around here monthly, other items depending on what they are could change daily or weekly. Best bet if you have more than one yard to choose from call and ask prices before you go!

My yard updates prices daily.
Wichita Material Recovery Metal Prices 316-303-9303

I'm not sure if this is true everywhere but scrap metal and gas prices change at the same time by me. Gas has gone up here by $0.35 a gallon and scrap went up another $1 a hundred. It keeps the cost of running scrap minus gas money around the same.