Northerner

I have lived north my whole life . As of now i am more north then previous . My wife keeps talking of a desire to move south like Georgia. not sure of the town But how is the scraping down south . Up north I feel it's very good . heavy Boilers along with all user items. & i live in an area that from the 1800's was know as steel town, so you never know what you will find.This week i found some steel to the tune of 500 lb just siting in dirt it was OLD .
Down south might have lots of AC's ? but northern ny is sloppy in some ways, so the stuff is around . I'm thinking southerners might be cleaner and i am not sure if my northern accent will do well to approach people for scrap also. Heck i found an old TV from the 60's the yoke had 2 lb copper and 2 in the transformer I think i am living in scraper heaven. Just the same a move might cause ME TO GET A REAL JOB & make less??

Done some scrappin' in the south (Florida), nice folks but man the stuff gets rusty fast..cars flop around bad from the rot and rip in half! You will have competition..it is an important source of income in rural areas. Might be a good e-scrap market, probably not well developed yet.

Can't tell ya nuttin bout Georiga. Nuttin bout Florida. But here in the real deep south (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) the scrapping is good. Real good. Lots of competition, but it's like anything else. You gotta put forth the effort to make the $$$. Lots of A/C's for sure. And Area67's right about the e-scrap market being underdeveloped. Looks like folks are just starting to notice it, but very few are actually into it yet. One more thing down here. Lots of junk cars if that's your thing. And I won't lie to ya. The northern accent? That will hold you back down here for a while. Till folks get to know ya and see that you can be trusted. Honesty and fairness goes a long way down here and eventually they'll see that in you and you'll start getting more business. Best thing of all? Fishing, hunting, mud riding, 4 wheeling, smokey 'ol country bar rooms? Naa.. NO SNOW!!!!

I hate the cold. I really should move.

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Originally Posted by IdahoScrapper

I hate the cold. I really should move.

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It's cheaper than you would think to get by in NorCal. Just a thought. And if you're a conservative you'll fit right in where I live, haha.

D.D is from Georgia, Olddude is from Florida, maybe they'll chime in later this morning. You could always move to West-BY God Virginia,,lol

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Originally Posted by Area67

Done some scrappin' in the south (Florida), nice folks but man the stuff gets rusty fast..cars flop around bad from the rot and rip in half! You will have competition..it is an important source of income in rural areas. Might be a good e-scrap market, probably not well developed yet.

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You make a good point about the competition. When all the construction slowed to a halt it put a lot of non skilled labors out of work and a lot of them turned to scrap to get by. You can drive down any back road around my area and not find a single hunk of steel. Years ago the back roads were cluttered with all kinds of scrap. They still dump the cases from TV's and the non metal parts of pull out couches and easy chairs.

Finding a job is not easy around these parts! A work crew these days consist of one American that speaks Spanish and and a van full of Mexicans. That's a whole different issue....

There are tons of AC units being changed out all the time. Most people can't live without them here. But the problem is that the companies all know the value of a system and sell them to a scrapper or have someone in house scrapping them out. I fall into the in house category. I would not expect coming by AC units by chance. There are a few guys around that is all they do is go and buy them from companies, so one would have to out bid them, cutting into your profit.

Copper Head if you do plan a move I would research the area first and see if getting a job is even an option where you go. Chances are if jobs are scarce then scrap will also be hard to come by.

Good luck, I for one would not live anywhere but here in the warm sunny south! I hate the cold!

It must be about adapting , The north is cold during the real winter by me -16 but generally 3 to 15 deg in winter ,so some to many summer scrapers just bail out in the winter & some times never to return. Summer is plenty hot also we were hitting 106 this year so some people also loose interest during the heat.
Still sounds like the south scraping is a very serious thing people pursue so i guess just driving around the picking will be slim.
During the summer I went to Lancaster PA and wile i saw things it was still less then by me. The south might be calling but till that day I am here

I was scrapin' just south of Tampa and picked up a partner outta of a wrecking yard, we hit a good plan I will share. We went to trailer parks (working folk mind you) with a case of beer and made contact with most everyone (sharing beer) and offered to give each customer a share(%40) we took a share for the hauling and we put %20 into a hellatious block party for everybody on the next Saturday night. Just so that they didn't think we would "cut and run" we had the "little ol lady" at the park hold beer/food after each and every load. Man that worked really well we were going to everybody's relations to "add to the kitty" and we had a blast. We did well on radiators/etc. Even got a town clean-up out of it!!

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Originally Posted by skylinejackjr

The northern accent? That will hold you back down here for a while

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He's right, my whole family is in the south, and they don't trust us yanks.

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Originally Posted by Filthy

He's right, my whole family is in the south, and they don't trust us yanks.

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Not so much a problem here in Florida, most everyone is a yank down here.
That's why the driving is so bad! people from all over the place!

FL is the outlier... the farther south you go in FL, the more yanks you find.

When i was in FL, I hung with some locals, At first I heard some northern bashing, but since I was easy going. the guys i hung with took me in & befriended me I had a great time.
Still once I was at a huge bar that had pool tables and saw a classic fight that involved pool sticks on heads , I think the real southerners are a tough bunch, but fare if they see your on there side, along with not being some arrogant yank .

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Originally Posted by CollinsHaulin

It's cheaper than you would think to get by in NorCal. Just a thought. And if you're a conservative you'll fit right in where I live, haha.

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i found myself a pretty good labor niche in silicon valley, i got a lot of indian tech customers cuase NONE of them own a pickup truck. i should reallly start hitting them up for electronic scrap