I got a call a couple weeks ago from a married couple who said they just bought a piece of property and they had some junk they wanted hauled off. I didn't think much of it at the time, I figured it was just your average trash job. However something told me to go out there and take a look at the job first, so that's exactly what I did.
Upon closer inspection and speaking to the couple in person, it turned out that the previous owners of the property had a 3 car garage that had caught fire and burned clear down to the foundation.
The couple then told me I could have all the metal on the grounds, however there was a catch, I had to have it all gone and hauled away in two days. They said I had a week to get back to them if I wanted the job or they were going with someone else. This didn't look at all like an easy job, especially because I only have a pick-up truck and a van to haul scrap with and apparently the previous occupants of the property were demo derby enthusiasts and hoarders to the max. What we're talking about here is 2 tons of wire, car parts, small engines, household appliance debris, short steel, and tin. I mean it was daunting.
I knew I wanted the job and I was also aptly aware I was not big enough in any sense of the word-- business, equipment, and skill wise to complete it. So I did what I always do. I grabbed a six pack and sat on the couch. Finally I figured I could rent some heavy equipment from some friends I have who do landscaping/excavating and let a friend or two in on the deal. I mean it's an easy 4000-6000lbs of tin and probably another 2000lbs of Non-Ferrous.
So I called the couple and told them I could have it out in 24 hours.
What transpired after that was probably the hardest most physical labor I've ever actually done and it was also mentally exhausting being that it was the first time I had ever been the supervisor of anything this big with so much potential for things to go wrong.
I got 2 friends on the deal. One works for a local excavating company and we were able to talk his boss into letting us use a dump truck and a small excavator for a lump sum of 75 bucks. The other friend, well I just didn't want to lift engine blocks by myself.
We started the job at 10am and began sorting through the rubble by hand and using the excavator to push the trash away from the heavier metal so we could load it. This proved pretty advantageous because it let us clean and sort the metal as we were loading it.
By 2pm, We had begun to fill the dump truck almost completely full of short steel and tin. We were also well on our way to having most of the metal sorted and cleaned. I had a 50 gallon trash barrel filled with nothing but insulated copper wire, catalytic converters, and electric motors. I had a truck bed filled with nothing but auto cast and car parts, burned copper wire, and a few things I wanted to keep like usable oxygen/acetylene and propane tanks.
By 3pm, we were completely done and just getting ready to load up. Things went smoothly. So smoothly in fact, the couple who owned the property were rather impressed and were inquiring as to whether or not they could hire me to haul away their non-metallic waste and I told them I'd charge them a good 300 bucks for it. They even liked that too! Go figure lol...
By 4pm, we were dropping the metal off to sort through it one more time just to make sure we weren't losing any money and making sure it was all prepped for the scrap yard when it opens on Tuesday.
By 5pm, the three of us were eating a bucket of chicken at KFC.
Overall, for my first big job I'm impressed with myself and my ability to just pull an entire business out of my backside. I think I'll probably make around 1500 once everything is sold to the yard. After I split it with the crew and pay the rental on the excavator and truck, I should clear a good 500 easy.
That's like making 100 bucks an hour. I'm dizzy at the concept lol.
Over all it was a good day though. No one got hurt. No one started fighting over petty stuff. No equipment was broken or lost. I'm actually impressed. I hope all my other jobs go this well in the future and now I definitely have an "In" when I need heavy equipment for hauling and moving junk.
