Me, my bike and trailer.. it's 3am .. GO GO GO!! Scrappin' Time!!

Hey out there.. I am Chris, and I scrap my neighborhood streets on my bike and trailer in the early hours on trash pick up days. I know, a bicycle... Don't laugh though: I cover EVERY street and can stop on a dime to investigate. If and item is too big for the bike, I'll come back later for it with my SUV. I'm going on about 1/4 of a year, so I am still very much a newbie.. To date, I've pulled out nearly 2,000 lbs of ferrous "tin" metal, 350 lbs of aluminum, and 32+ lbs of copper, and I have a small stash of gold scraps. I get lots of deer that bolt out in front of my bicycle at last minute, which I find to be comical, never thought I'd need to slam on the breaks to avoid a crash due to deer - I think we need more hunters - in fact I had 3 this AM; a new record. My diamond in the rough item was an outdoor electrical low-voltage lighting box that I later found to contain a ton of #2 copper. The oddest item I've come across so far was a gigantic 8' round ferrous satellite dish. I am not sure that even got picked up by the trash guys, lol. I couldn't even put that on the roof of my SUV.. the best item I've come across.. hmm lets see.. gotta be that tank-less hot water heater with about 10 feet of #1 copper tubing - what an "i" dot to throw that away. Or it could be the huge stash of copper wire that someone hopped to spilt one day for a profit, but probably the wife made him toss it all out. I guess I just like the trill of the 'find', and knowing I can make a small profit on this item(s) - I find my bicycle keeps profits maximized to the utmost and keeps me in shape. Lastly, I love what I call "e" piles, or eviction piles - you can always find a computer in one of those puppies.

Anyone found easy ways to splice rubber coated threaded copper wire? Just curious. Let me know.

Nice meein' ya in advance!

Nice to meet ya FlSG1!!

I don't make the rounds with a bike and don't have too much trouble with deer in town (the 1.5 miles in between maybe) but I've been doing my bedroom town Monday morns (biggest trash out day) between about 0530 and 0630 before my day job. I don't hit all the streets but about 14 miles of residential. i think these Midwesterners tend to throw less good stuff away than the more transitory society of Florida and it has to be sticking out of the can, on top of it, or next to it for me to pick up but I always find something. Sometimes I make money and sometimes maybe its pays for the gas but like you, its sort of the "thrill of the hunt". I have a storage unit now which is handy to keep some stuff out of the garage. I will probably keep it up through October but probably curtail it in the colder months when I might be trapping before the day job.

Have fun!! There's lots to learn on this forum :lol:!!

welcome from iowa

The profit with a bike human power - sounds smart .
I remember when we had the floods a few years ago
I surveyed some streets on bike , established permission
with people .
Seemed like minimal intrusion on some of the worst streets at the time
basically I put bike on car roof parked car at a CVS then investigated .