Need a little advice.

First I want to say that this is a great forum. A wealth of knowledge, no doubt. My question to all is do you guys think that offering to buy scrap,appliances,car batteries, etc. is a good way to get an egde at getting more business. In my area (southwest Missouri) there are countless adds on craigslist, local papers, and in flyers offering to haul off scrap free of charge. I'm not talking about paying huge sums of money but if I offered say $2-$5 dollars for appliances, maybe $20 dollars for a load of mixed scrap (a load would be what I can fit into a longbed ford ranger and a 8ft trailer) and say $1-$2 dollars for car batteries. It seems that maybe a few bucks along with the free service of hauling things off might help in drawing more business. Do you think this would cut to deep into the profits? Thanks again. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

First off, welcome to the forum, hope you stick around for awhile. Second, we(my partner and I) pay 1-2 dollars for computers and I have a sign in my front yard that I buy car/truck batteries for 4 dollars and lawn mower/motorcycle batteries for 1.50 ea. That way people are bringing the batteries to me and after I save up a few, I haul them all in. It depends what your yard is paying for batteries. Mine is paying .25lb right now. I make $4.00 on each MC battery and $10-11 on each car/truck. Not gonna get rich on them but it's steady money. And I don't have to go out and pick them up. Large scrap loads you could split the ticket if your yard pays good. Just take a percentage. Some people here do that, just not me.