Uneducated (or just plain stupid) scrappers..

I ocassionally take a stroll out to the shred pile at work and will pull out sealed tanks, non-ferrouos items and other stuff that doesn't belong in there. Today I just walked out there and pulled out 30 pounds of #2 insulated wire, about 20 pounds of clean yellow brass and some other tools that I could use. While I was there I saw a guy throwing a bunch of cast parts in there. I put a magnet to them and it didn't stick so I told him to take them to our non-ferrous yard directly across the street and we would pay him $.22 a pound. He said he wasn't concerned about it and just left. All and all he probably threw 300-400 pounds of 50% cast breakage in the shred pile leaving close to $50 on the table. Sometimes I am astounded at the stuff people throw in there! While all this was going on, some of the guys that work on the ferrous yard were hitting about 20 pay phones that one of my customers brought in with sledge hammers to extract the quarters that were left in them. Between the three of them they all made about $30 each in quarters and were walking around with their pockets full and a smile on their face.

The funny thing is, when the guy brought the pay phones in I picked one up and shook it and heard money in there. I told him that there were still quarters in there and he said he didn't care because he didn't have a key to open them. All of this happened within about 10 minutes of me being on the yard. That be said I will now write up a proposal to my boss encouraging him to hire a guy to simply work the shred pile. He would pay for himself by pulling upgrades out of the shred pile and he could also help customers unload by hand, making our customer service that much better.

Thats my rant for the day.

Personally I would ask if I could buy items from the shred pile for the same cents on the pound your boss gets when he sells it. Bring in a trailer, load up then drive it across the road yourself. Or a variation thereof.

I see the same things all the time at the yards too. I used to think they are uneducated or stupid like you suggest, but I really believe they are just that lazy. Probably go home a drink their beer and smoke their weed and complain about how hard life is.

By me you need ID and fingerprint to turn in any metal except steel and alum cans to get paid. I see lots of stuff in the piles as well...

Stainless steel sinks, cast aluminum grills, ceiling fan motors, extension ladders, most common items I see in the steel pile on a weekly basis.

If somone bringing in shred saw somthing are you allowed to grab it and pay shred price for it? or would be a yard by yard rule?

How do you end up with 20 pay phones with money still in them but not have a key? Did the guy dropping them off have any paperwork from the phone company?

I see stuff all the time, from complete towers to motors, wire ect. Makes me ill.

Like i always say if you have time at work to go through the shredd pile then you obviously aren't doing your other job. My point being whats going on in that shredd pile doesn't concern you at all and isn't making the company any money by having an hourly employee look through the pile to see whats in it and what isn't in it. It doesn't concern you and you should get back to work doing your normal job at the yard. My pet peeve is people taking time away from the company to go through a pile and pick out something that they want to take home. Honestly you shouldn't be out of your department or your crane. Now get back to work.

So you would'nt pay someone to go thru the pile?

Pistone I have decided you are just plain pissed off at the world and aren't getting your share of sugar booger.

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Originally Posted by PistoneScrapProcessing

Like i always say if you have time at work to go through the shredd pile then you obviously aren't doing your other job. My point being whats going on in that shredd pile doesn't concern you at all and isn't making the company any money by having an hourly employee look through the pile to see whats in it and what isn't in it. It doesn't concern you and you should get back to work doing your normal job at the yard. My pet peeve is people taking time away from the company to go through a pile and pick out something that they want to take home. Honestly you shouldn't be out of your department or your crane. Now get back to work.

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Goodness man, They're not paid to pay attention? look around? know what's going on? try to improve the place? Your post reminds me of a story my aunt told about a spinach packing place she worked at. Some reason she had nothing to do, and noticed the number of caterpillars in the spinach, so she grabbed a box and started picking them off and tossing them in. Soon after, the boss came by and asks what she's doing, "we don't have time for that, come on, I'll find you something else". Enjoy your spinach :D

Not plain pissed off my pet peeve is people who are supposed to be operating equipment on the ground sorting through piles. You have 8 hours at a scrap yard to get work done even 10 mins of not working can have a cascading effect throughout the yard as to what gets loaded unloaded and crane placement get thrown out of whack. Tripping over dollars to make a few dimes. They bought it as shredd ship it as shredd. I see the big picture when others see a small window.

So if someone throws 100 lbs of copper pipe in your shred pile, you wouldn't take 2 minutes to grab what you could.

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Originally Posted by PistoneScrapProcessing

Not plain pissed off my pet peeve is people who are supposed to be operating equipment on the ground sorting through piles. You have 8 hours at a scrap yard to get work done even 10 mins of not working can have a cascading effect throughout the yard as to what gets loaded unloaded and crane placement get thrown out of whack. Tripping over dollars to make a few dimes. They bought it as shredd ship it as shredd. I see the big picture when others see a small window.

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Nose to the grindstone, that's true as well.

More jobs in the yard then processing the chit...How many locomotives come in on the back of someone's jalopy so far this year PSP? Peddlers are just part of what crosses the scales.

Kz I think we might see this issue of sorting through the shredd differently. I look to attach a dollar value to everything going on in the yard. Let's put it like this that crane should be making a hundred dollars plus an hour. Taking 15 mins to pull out 30 bucks worth of material out of the pile doesn't make sense when they should just move and process the material in the yard. I have been in meetings with employees and yard managers where the employees got there sh$t jumped for going through the shredd instead of putting the shredd in the pile and getting back to making bales. they were taking washers and dryers and crushing them with grapple then getting out there crane to pick up a dollar how is the yard supposed to make money doing that.

At my yard I've seen people bring in whole washers dryers etc. When the workers unload the scrap with their grapples they intentionally pull the motors out of them with a yank and throw them in a whole different pile. Now I know that it's not the same as walking around picking but part of their jobs is sorting the scrap.

According to my math, BohemianLush was making the yard a much higher hourly rate than the crane guy at that particular time.

30lbs Insulated #2 = 41.70 at 1.39 per lb
20lbs yellow brass = 40.00 at 2.00 per lb
Cast Breakage = extra 50.00

He states this all happened in about a 10 minute time period.

10 minute total = $131.70
Hourly rate = $790.20
Crane guy = $100.00 hourly

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Originally Posted by cobre collector

According to my math, BohemianLush was making the yard a much higher hourly rate than the crane guy at that particular time.

30lbs Insulated #2 = 41.70 at 1.39 per lb
20lbs yellow brass = 40.00 at 2.00 per lb
Cast Breakage = extra 50.00

He states this all happened in about a 10 minute time period.

10 minute total = $131.70
Hourly rate = $790.20
Crane guy = $100.00 hourly

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Wow that's looking at the big picture. We could take this a step farther and use a statistical study to determine what per cent age of material should not be in there and see just how much money we are losing. When I get a bale in I sample it to make sure it is the advertised recovery. Its amazing how easy it is to find dines and how hard it is to find dollars. I wish I had more employees who thought about how they could make me more money.

I'm not a yard owner, but it seems to me you could have a guy at the pile for minimum wage with a wheel barrow picking out good stuff all day long and come out smelling like roses. I bet you would have no trouble finding people to do that job on commission either. Split the take with someone and I bet you would have a line up of scrappers trying to get in on that action.

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Originally Posted by High Voltage Processing

Wow that's looking at the big picture. We could take this a step farther and use a statistical study to determine what per cent age of material should not be in there and see just how much money we are losing. When I get a bale in I sample it to make sure it is the advertised recovery. Its amazing how easy it is to find dines and how hard it is to find dollars. I wish I had more employees who thought about how they could make me more money.

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I was just about to say the same thing. Having an employee that is looking out for you and your business is worth more then all the money you have in that pile. Next time he does that, fire his a$$ and send him my way.

I go to case in oakland ca. They have a magnet that sorts out non ferrous as it comes to the shred pile. It is a two man operation one one the magnet picking up metal then dropping it to the side of the pile then the worker on the ground picks the non ferrous out and the operator picks the metal back up and throws it on the pile. This way all of their shred gets sorted before it goes on the pile. The supervisor says they pull out thousands of pounds per day. The steel yard at cass takes in an avg of 500,000 lbs of ferrous per day. And by the way if you live in the bay area I would recommend going to cass they help you separate your metal and always give you way more #1 on your ticket I bring a lot of appliances and am getting an avg of about $280 per ton.

Cobre that could work either way. How about the other way around crane operator loads three trucks during the hour at an average of 1,000.00 dollars a piece that's three grand. I am not gonna argue you with because we both see it differently and everyone has a different opinion. I just don't see the point in picking through the pile. When you have thousands of tons of material to process messing with a small amount of non-ferrous just seems like a losing proposition. How often does non-ferrous really end up in the shredd pile to is another question. Most scrappers aren't stupid and most companies aren't either about what they throw into a container now a days. I think we are both right in the end because every yard is different and runs differently with different buying prices and management.

Whether or not picking from the shred pile works depends heavily on the yard in question, or more specifically, the shredder that the yard has.

For example, my facility does not have a shredder. As a result, any non-ferrous that goes into my shipments to a shredder is effectively lost to me. Any non-ferrous that is pulled out worth much more to me than material that I buy on my small scales. A a result, we have one employee whose job is to pick our shred pile before it is packed for shipment.

A large yard with a modern shredder (and all of the separation technology that goes with it) is able to recover a great deal of the non-ferrous material after shredding. An important thing to realize is that non-ferrous material in the finished shred product is a no-no for mills. Copper is extremely troublesome. Zorba (primarily aluminum), Zurich (primarily stainless steel), shelmo/meatballs (shredded electric motors), insulated wire, circuit boards, etc. are all examples of what gets pulled out of the post shred stream by drum magnets, eddy-current separators, and optical separators.

As a result, it's probably a losing money scenario for a large yard to pick the pile. For a small yard, it can be close to pure profit.

Has anyone considered the fact that BohemianLush does not work in the yard at all and is actually part of the sales and management team in the office?
Would it make a difference in your thoughts? Just a thought.

What happens as they are loading up a truck and see some unattached motors or pile of copper? Someone is usually on the ground as they are loading up the trucks, so would it be ok to take it then?

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Originally Posted by Junker

Has anyone considered the fact that BohemianLush does not work in the yard at all and is actually part of the sales and management team in the office?
Would it make a difference in your thoughts? Just a thought.

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Yep it sure does, now I think he's a fine example of "leadership by example", as well as a good employee.

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Originally Posted by Junker

Has anyone considered the fact that BohemianLush does not work in the yard at all and is actually part of the sales and management team in the office?
Would it make a difference in your thoughts? Just a thought.

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Junker's on the ball. This just so happens to be the yard I frequent and Bohemian is my customer rep. Always around when I have a question on something I'm bringing in or about pricing.

If I was behind the desk most of the day trying to round up large quantities of product to buy I would definitely step outside every once and a while to see what's up, and if I'm on break or lunch, who f'n cares.

Hobo, I am just curious as to why someone would have to be on the ground when a magnet is picking the material up? I have never seen ground people while loading anything. Now sorting through cast yes. Sorting through prepared plate and structural no.

Yard I go to you are dropping off stuff while they are loading trucks up, gets kind of crazy to say the least. Guy is like a traffic cop! LOL
And this is sheet iron.

My neighbor gets so much scrap that for awhile he never broke it down, for him it was efficiency.... I would troll him hard, and tell him what he needed to break apart.....I offered to buy all his scrap. He got smart now he hired someone to help him break the stuff down.

I think for most it uneducated, a few are stupid and just need quick cash.

At my yard the guy running the crane does other stuff when not loading trailers. The other guy with the bulldozer watches what gets tossed in the shred pile. He keeps a eye out for lets say,,,, Logs, bricks, stormdoors with glass, ect. But when its time to push the pile in, hes in the dozer. They pull out the good stuff like towers, Transmissions, Car rims, aluminum chairs/ tables ect thats acessable and put it off to the side. It could be that its in the ghetto and the tweeks just throw it in the pile and go get there fix money. I hate those 55 gallon garbage can walk-in people that cut everyone in line to get on the shred scale.

Wow...I din't know I was starting a s**t storm with that post! Kinda funny to think that that innocent post stirred up a hornet's nest.

G_P: The guy with the pay phones did have documentation. My yard has been in business under 2 owners for 80 years. You don't do that by buying stolen material.

Pistone: What led you to believe that I was a crane operator? Or even a worker on the yard? Believe me you would not want me out there operating heavy machinery! Junker had it right... I am actually the inside buyer for the company. My position is similar to that of a salesman, but instead of selling I am buying the material. A big part of my job is getting to know customers and seeing what they are bringing in. If I were to spend the whole day in my office there would be a disconnect between I and the customers. So when it is slower in the office I throw on my hard hat and go out to the yard. I help customers unload by hand, hand out magnets and say hello to people I haven't seen in the yard before.

So what you may see as a waste of company time and resources, I (and my company) see it as customer relations. Wouldn't you rather have a conversation with someone at the yard rather than be herded through like cattle and treated like you are just a number?

All the goodies that I pull out of the shred pile are just the icing on the cake. We don't run a shredder, just a shear. All of our shred is shipped to a local shredder and we upgrade the cut grades that end up in the shred pile.

Ohh and the tanks that I pull out of the shred pile SAVE my company money. If we were to ship a load with too many tanks in it, it would get rejected by the shredder. This essentially would cost my company thousands of dollars in freight cost. It might even save a life, because I have seen firsthand the destruction a sealed tank can do when sent through a shredder.

Pistone...my company processes the second most scrap in the state of Colorado. We do this because employees such as myself go the extra mile, get to know the customers and genuinely care about the company and the bottom line. You will forever be relinquished to being the worker bee instead of the queen with your mindset.

Now get off the computer and get back to stripping wire before I fire you!

If you ever leave CO for PA give me a call. :-)

High Voltage...I appreciate the offer, but I left the East Coast for the slower pace that I found in the tranquil Rocky Mountains. My family back east keeps trying to get me to move home and I keep trying to get them to move to Colorado.

bohemianlush i like your mindset

Well well i guess I got told.