introduction / my niche $500-$2k in a week.

I have been scrapping on and of for years as a side hustle. Now i tried to post an introduction few days ago but i dont think admin let it through so i´ll tell you guys what i´ve been doing in this sub.

I´ve been sending dated flyers to private households suburb by suburb for weekend collection. 2k-4k flyers printed and distributed is around €200-€300. i send out the flyers a week prior to collection date in the suburb so people have enough time to clean their yard and collect all metal into one pile. Pick up scrap in weekends and separate/clean/monetise during the week. The reason i go suburb by suburb instead of undated flyers to whole city is making sure all scrap is close together so with one truck i can empty 5-10 households in 1 hour and not lose on fuel driving from one end of town to another.
usual yeld is around €500-€1500 scrap plus some odd items worthy of sale. Thing is unless you hire couple guys so you can do multiple towns at once its limited income(which is why its my side hustle). If this strategy could help you where you live i´m happy to share my tips and knowledge as long as you dont live in the same town as i :)

Now during my scrap runs i have noticed few areas where scrap yards are losing money. What brings me to this forum is to do a bit of a market research to make sure whether my strategy to move up the ladder would actually work in the real world. May be im missing something and i´d be chasing my tail for a few years while trying to execute my ,,great lucrative plan´´

Welcome to SMF. It sounds like you have a plan which is the first step. Please keep us updated so we know how it works out for you.

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Originally Posted by rahe01

I have been scrapping on and of for years as a side hustle. Now i tried to post an introduction few days ago but i dont think admin let it through so i´ll tell you guys what i´ve been doing in this sub.

I´ve been sending dated flyers to private households suburb by suburb for weekend collection. 2k-4k flyers printed and distributed is around €200-€300. i send out the flyers a week prior to collection date in the suburb so people have enough time to clean their yard and collect all metal into one pile. Pick up scrap in weekends and separate/clean/monetise during the week. The reason i go suburb by suburb instead of undated flyers to whole city is making sure all scrap is close together so with one truck i can empty 5-10 households in 1 hour and not lose on fuel driving from one end of town to another.
usual yeld is around €500-€1500 scrap plus some odd items worthy of sale. Thing is unless you hire couple guys so you can do multiple towns at once its limited income(which is why its my side hustle). If this strategy could help you where you live i´m happy to share my tips and knowledge as long as you dont live in the same town as i :)

Now during my scrap runs i have noticed few areas where scrap yards are losing money. What brings me to this forum is to do a bit of a market research to make sure whether my strategy to move up the ladder would actually work in the real world. May be im missing something and i´d be chasing my tail for a few years while trying to execute my ,,great lucrative plan´´

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I did read your other post, and I think what you are planning, unless I have misread, is essentially no different than being a broker. Which is the same as what a scrapyard does. In fact, often times there is many brokers and middle men from scrap sales, all making some money on their part.

For example, the closest yard by me collects from everyday people and sells by the truckload to a scrapyard a little further away. That scrapyard shreds and sell it's shred to someone else. Who then packages in shipping containers and exports.

There is plenty of chains like this all over the country. I am just not sure where in that chain you are thinking you can jump in and make money.

I am now totally confused

I see it as curb-co with the added strategy that it concentrates the metal in one place at the same time. Maybe similar to spring cleaning events that many communities around here use, bringing out all kinds of scrappers to pillage through the piles.

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

I am now totally confused

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In his other post
https://www.scrapmetalforum.com/gene...ht=#post301903

He essentially said he want to collect scrap from multiple businesses, and then somehow sell it to whoever the scrapyards are selling to, or sell to someone even higher than that ....

Which essentially is him being a scrapyard. That's all scrapyards do.

That isn't entirely relevant to what he is saying he does here, but he mentioned his other post and thought it was deleted so I was responding to it, here.... It is not deleted tho it doesn't seem.

But yes, curbco, but with the extra step of advertising that you'll be around to pick stuff up, so people know it's large item pickup and put stuff out. Around me everyone knows if they put something out, it will get taken by one of probably a hundred scrappers so no flyers needed....

But making an extra $500-2000/wk is nothing to sneeze at .... That pretty darn good. So whatever he's doing is working

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Originally Posted by kss

That isn't entirely relevant to what he is saying he does here, but he mentioned his other post and thought it was deleted so I was responding to it, here.... It is not deleted tho it doesn't seem.

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Yeah i started with an introduction and expleained what i do and some tips that may be some of the guys here could use. then i went on and created the sub in order to get some second opinion about a potential $$$ i see to be made in quite a few scrap yards. And i thought thats the place to ask for some kinda directions in regards to global scrap prices and payment terms but i only got proof to my suspicion that nobody really feels comfortable talking about that topic as my thread was taken over by beer enthusiasts besides one useful tip of becoming an apprentice to a traveling scrap broker(of whom im searching for now).

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Originally Posted by kss

But yes, curbco, but with the extra step of advertising that you'll be around to pick stuff up, so people know it's large item pickup and put stuff out. Around me everyone knows if they put something out, it will get taken by one of probably a hundred scrappers so no flyers needed....

But making an extra $500-2000/wk is nothing to sneeze at .... That pretty darn good. So whatever he's doing is working

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I lived in Australia for 5 years and curb collection was a very big thing over there but where i live now leaving your stuff at curb is considered taboo and littering so you dont really see anyone leaving their scrap on the curb. Plus due to high crime rate every house has a fence around its land so where the fence ends theres immediately a sidewalk and then the road so theres usually nowhere to put your stuff either. So what i do to prevent my customers for getting fined and other scrappers taking my load i add my phone number and email to the flyers so customers have to register their scrap and we agree to a specific time for pickup so they just carry out the stuff 5min to 1 hour prior to my arrival.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kss

In his other post
https://www.scrapmetalforum.com/gene...ht=#post301903

He essentially said he want to collect scrap from multiple businesses, and then somehow sell it to whoever the scrapyards are selling to, or sell to someone even higher than that ....

Which essentially is him being a scrapyard. That's all scrapyards do.

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The idea behind that thread is that when i move further away from the town the scrap prices paid decrease. The scrap yards closer to CBD pay better rates but are owned by giants and all the smaller suburban and country scrap yards buy with slightly lover rates and sell to these giants who in turn export all their metals. now the rates these giants pay are about third lower than london metal exchange prices(even half lower for aluminium) I all ready found a local aluminium end buyer for a decent price. What im trying to figure out is whether LME prices are actually what end users pay for the metal? if thats the case i could easily top these giants prices by 15% and still make another 15% in process. Still i know little enough about export to be afraid of losing 20% in my first deal.

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Originally Posted by rahe01

The idea behind that thread is that when i move further away from the town the scrap prices paid decrease. The scrap yards closer to CBD pay better rates but are owned by giants and all the smaller suburban and country scrap yards buy with slightly lover rates and sell to these giants who in turn export all their metals. now the rates these giants pay are about third lower than london metal exchange prices(even half lower for aluminium) I all ready found a local aluminium end buyer for a decent price

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The further away you are, the higher your transportation prices are going to be. Also, the longer it will take to move your scrap. Longer time to move stuff means you are open to price fluctuations more (if you arent working of a contract and just selling by weight to someone else), so there is more risk. Further out places also probably are less populated and thus have less volume than larger places. In this business its all about volume so these combined reasons are probably why further out places can only pay what they are paying.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rahe01

What im trying to figure out is whether LME prices are actually what end users pay for the metal? if thats the case i could easily top these giants prices by 15% and still make another 15% in process. Still i know little enough about export to be afraid of losing 20% in my first deal.

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I am 99% sure you cannot top the giants. They have economies of scale working for them.

Metals markets work like the stock markets (kind of). They are futures, but it is similar. There are bids, and there are asks. If you are someone with a bunch of scrap (like the giants) you can put out an ask price. For example, lets say I am one of the giants. I have 1000Tons of copper.... I can then sell futures against my commodity. So I can say as the giant "I am going to sell 100T of copper to be delivered to Y, 1 month from today, for $X".... And people that need 100T of copper can bid or purchase that contract.

For you to be able to enter the lme market, I think you need to have a few things:

As a seller:
Ownership of a lot of metal
A way to move all of it cheaply

As a buyer:
A lot of money
A way to take delivery of the metal
A place to store the metal


I think you may be in over you head thinking you can just show up to the LME and somehow make out better than established companies that have probably been doing this for many years and who probably have much more resources than you do.

Edit: in regards to "whether LME prices are actually what end users pay for the metal?"

The answer is yes. Someone is paying some price at some time, but it fluctuates. Thats why the futures and options exist. They are contracts between 2 entities. If you have scrap to get rid of you can sell futures or options against it.

You also have to take into account the risk of all of this. By just selling it to someone like a scrapyard you remove all the risk from yourself, and pass it along to them. If you sell to a scrap yard for $x/ton and then the next day the market tanks, they could end up losing money. The same could happen to you if you do something like buy a bunch of it up from people with the intention to resell on the LME. You could fork out $100k on buying it all up and then when you go to sell it it only be worth $50k. Or something like that. There is a lot that goes into all of it and the scrapyards, brokers, and people on the exchange make their money buy knowing all the variables and even knowing all of the variables still sometimes get burned.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rahe01

I have been scrapping on and of for years as a side hustle. Now i tried to post an introduction few days ago but i dont think admin let it through so i´ll tell you guys what i´ve been doing in this sub.

I´ve been sending dated flyers to private households suburb by suburb for weekend collection. 2k-4k flyers printed and distributed is around €200-€300. i send out the flyers a week prior to collection date in the suburb so people have enough time to clean their yard and collect all metal into one pile. Pick up scrap in weekends and separate/clean/monetise during the week. The reason i go suburb by suburb instead of undated flyers to whole city is making sure all scrap is close together so with one truck i can empty 5-10 households in 1 hour and not lose on fuel driving from one end of town to another.
usual yeld is around €500-€1500 scrap plus some odd items worthy of sale. Thing is unless you hire couple guys so you can do multiple towns at once its limited income(which is why its my side hustle). If this strategy could help you where you live i´m happy to share my tips and knowledge as long as you dont live in the same town as i :)

Now during my scrap runs i have noticed few areas where scrap yards are losing money. What brings me to this forum is to do a bit of a market research to make sure whether my strategy to move up the ladder would actually work in the real world. May be im missing something and i´d be chasing my tail for a few years while trying to execute my ,,great lucrative plan´´

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Get used to the taste of your tail.

Aluminum, on the LME , seems like a very general term to me.

Would that be virgin, unalloyed, aluminum ?

If so .... that would be a very different thing from scrap aluminum.

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

I am now totally confused

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Yes. My thoughts exactly.

Do research and find the best prices. Talk to people who buy. Find your sweet spot buying price points.
Four main points of business:
1. Land
2. Labor
3. Capital
4. Entrepreneurial talent