A Scrappers Dream; Metal Prices - Page 2

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

Pirate, not as good as it looks, that's for a gross ton not a net ton. About 240 lb difference.

Not happy that my local yards switched to gross tons. I converted the pricing to net toines to make it easier. thats why the numbers look funny.

I miss doing the price per lb in my head

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

Pirate, not as good as it looks, that's for a gross ton not a net ton. About 240 lb difference.

Yup, I realize it's not great, but it's better than having it sit inside my 24x24 garage.

Being in Hawaii, many of our scrap prices are lower than the national average:

Unprepared Steel & White Goods: $0.04/lbs.
Sheet & Cast Aluminum: $0.40/lbs.
#1 Copper: $1.00/lbs.
Insulated Copper Wire: $0.50/lbs.

The cheapest way to send boards to mainland processors through regular mail is sending a 70 lbs. flat rate box. Even if you wedge 70 lbs. of boards into the large flat rate (not going to happen) it costs $0.22 to ship. On average, though, you can expect to pay about $1.25 per pound to ship boards from Hawaii. Even Parcel Select at the maximum 70 lbs. costs $105.03 ($1.50 per pound to ship). USPS and FedEx are out of the picture. The wonderful life living in a Zone 8.

Originally Posted by Scrap808

Being in Hawaii, many of our scrap prices are lower than the national average:

Unprepared Steel & White Goods: $0.04/lbs.
Sheet & Cast Aluminum: $0.40/lbs.
#1 Copper: $1.00/lbs.
Insulated Copper Wire: $0.50/lbs.

The cheapest way to send boards to mainland processors through regular mail is sending a 70 lbs. flat rate box. Even if you wedge 70 lbs. of boards into the large flat rate (not going to happen) it costs $0.22 to ship. On average, though, you can expect to pay about $1.25 per pound to ship boards from Hawaii. Even Parcel Select at the maximum 70 lbs. costs $105.03 ($1.50 per pound to ship). USPS and FedEx are out of the picture. The wonderful life living in a Zone 8.

You might want to experiment with how much brass or copper you can fit in a flat rate box

shred - 225/ton
sealed compressors .14
l/a batteries - .30
electric motors - .29
copper alum rad (mainly heat sinks) - 1.35
steel case batteries (battery back ups) - .27
insulated #2 - 1.03
insulated #3 - .73
#1 copper - 2.70
#2 copper - 2.60
#3 copper - 2.50
irony brass - .35
unclean extruded - .54
clean extruded - .68
old sheet alum- .50
die cast - .38
cast aluminum - .50

mid michigan area

Parts of this were submitted in another thread, but because it is specific to this discussion, it is repeated.

Just an update on the buyers that have sent representatives to the project and submitted quotes. Sadoff Metal of Wisconsin and Nebraska is the smallest company to submit a bid. The next smallest is Alter Metals with 51 locations, followed by Acme out of Chicago, and Sims out of Virginia, the largest metal recycler in the world. This week DJJ (Nucor) will send a team for a tour. They have a refinery in Norfolk, NE.

All quotes are tied to the Iron Age metal index. This index is by subscription, but if you want to see it, ask your local yard. Getting to know these big players has provided some valuable insight into the metals markets. They have also been valuable in predicting the future trends for the metal markets. Warning was given of a softening of the metal market in the mid west two weeks ago, which happened in our area. Each region of the country, export point, location of refineries, transportation costs, etc. all impact the metals market. The more middle men you can avoid, the better your price. Each quote promised their price for barges, gondola rail cars, and trucking. Since they deal with logistics constantly, they have better prices than those of us in the trenches.

I am glad you found DJJ. Like I said they are owned by Nucor. The Nucor plant is probably who you are going to ship to or to Kansas City. There really are no mills out where you are at so the price is depressed because of less competition. Shipping costs are through the roof and the further you ship that metal the less its worth because shipping is going to start eating away at the price per ton. I hope that you have looked at the trends in metal prices. If you can afford to do it. I wouldn't ship any metal during the summer months because the price of obsolete scrap nosedives due to the abundance of scrap flowing into yards across the country. If you can afford it and are a gambler it's something you have to consider. I will tell you this though that if you don't for some reason reach your 50 gt a day I will come and look at your setup and maybe provide some pointers. I am curious to see how it's going to work out for you. Sometimes even the best laid plans go to waste. Where are you getting your labor from to? Its really hard to find good torch guys now a days. No one wants to get down and dirty with metal.

Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

Not happy that my local yards switched to gross tons. I converted the pricing to net toines to make it easier. thats why the numbers look funny.

I miss doing the price per lb in my head

This is where your smartphone comes in handy. There's probably even an app for that. ;-)

Originally Posted by Patriot76

Parts of this were submitted in another thread, but because it is specific to this discussion, it is repeated.

Just an update on the buyers that have sent representatives to the project and submitted quotes. Sadoff Metal of Wisconsin and Nebraska is the smallest company to submit a bid. The next smallest is Alter Metals with 51 locations, followed by Acme out of Chicago, and Sims out of Virginia, the largest metal recycler in the world. This week DJJ (Nucor) will send a team for a tour. They have a refinery in Norfolk, NE.

All quotes are tied to the Iron Age metal index. This index is by subscription, but if you want to see it, ask your local yard. Getting to know these big players has provided some valuable insight into the metals markets. They have also been valuable in predicting the future trends for the metal markets. Warning was given of a softening of the metal market in the mid west two weeks ago, which happened in our area. Each region of the country, export point, location of refineries, transportation costs, etc. all impact the metals market. The more middle men you can avoid, the better your price. Each quote promised their price for barges, gondola rail cars, and trucking. Since they deal with logistics constantly, they have better prices than those of us in the trenches.

Next thing we know, Patriot's going to be buying metals futures to hedge against price volatility!

Originally Posted by PistoneScrapProcessing

I am glad you found DJJ. Like I said they are owned by Nucor. The Nucor plant is probably who you are going to ship to or to Kansas City. There really are no mills out where you are at so the price is depressed because of less competition. Shipping costs are through the roof and the further you ship that metal the less its worth because shipping is going to start eating away at the price per ton. I hope that you have looked at the trends in metal prices. If you can afford to do it. I wouldn't ship any metal during the summer months because the price of obsolete scrap nosedives due to the abundance of scrap flowing into yards across the country. If you can afford it and are a gambler it's something you have to consider. I will tell you this though that if you don't for some reason reach your 50 gt a day I will come and look at your setup and maybe provide some pointers. I am curious to see how it's going to work out for you. Sometimes even the best laid plans go to waste. Where are you getting your labor from to? Its really hard to find good torch guys now a days. No one wants to get down and dirty with metal.

The metal buyers are providing their market updates. This is taken with a grain of salt. To hedge the bet, I offered a smaller dealer the opportunity to bid. He declined because of shipping costs, but because the offer was made, he is providing me with his companies forecast for futures markets and the Iron Age index numbers. Other advice and insights have also been provided by this company. This will allow the monitoring of the honesty of other metal buyers. The labor is supplied by a separate company which makes the decisions. My only responsibility is the training of individuals. As a teacher at heart, this will be an endeavor of love. Really I am cheating, I have Petrogen Inc. and Miller/Smith coming in to teach the crew. Then my responsibility will only be guiding them. We also have a safety officer (retired OHSA regulator) that will be over seeing the project.

Plans have been made to stockpile steel when the price drops. We have the factory property that can store several thousand tons and other opportunities adjacent to this property to store metal. We will have to weigh the inconvenience of stockpiling to the profit margin.

As far as your offer to visit the site and make suggestions, I welcome it. I would prefer a visit before the project begins so we have the information we need from the start. I will personally pay your expenses to benefit from your expertise. Please let my know your schedule and we will try to make something work. Thanks.

Originally Posted by FLimits

Next thing we know, Patriot's going to be buying metals futures to hedge against price volatility!

Thanks for another lesson in economics. The only volatility I hedge against is my wife's temper. Therefore I have a standing order for spurs (for her horse), jewelry (for her and her horse), and a saddle (for her horse) for major mistakes.

Update on selling the metal. We finalized the metal purchase this week. Buyers from Chicago, Virginia, Gulf of Mexico, and the mid-west submitted quotes. They looked at moving it by barge, gondola cars, and trucks. All quotes were based on the Iron Age Index out of Chicago. End result, we are selling prepared iron for $ 85.00 per ton under the index. This includes them loading and hauling from the facility. To put it in perspective, my business prices as a scrapper generated $ 200 per ton under Iron Age and I had to load and haul.

The rest of the story: The company that won the bid actually sells to another company that quoted our proposal. How are they going to make a profit? They will sit on the metal until the price goes up. By the way, our deal includes a percentage of the increase in value when they sell. As my wife said, when the good lord closes a door, he opens a window.

Newest update on metal being sold. We were spending to much time sorting metal, I went back to the buyer with a proposal, a set price based on the Iron Age index of unsorted metal. They haul it from the hole, load it in their trucks, and haul it to the yard to sort. Great idea and we sold 680 tons this way in a month and a half. The buyer could not keep up sorting it so they backed out of the deal last week. As mentioned earlier, we had quotes from yards around the nation, so we will be getting new quotes. We have room to store the metal but will have to sort it in the future.

If you are having to sort, have you calculated how many people you can hire to help sort before you reach the breakeven cost? I would imagine that the additional labor will be less than the increase in price of the unsorted vs. the sorted material.

Thanks for the updates. They are more helpful than you realize.

Originally Posted by numbers

If you are having to sort, have you calculated how many people you can hire to help sort before you reach the breakeven cost? I would imagine that the additional labor will be less than the increase in price of the unsorted vs. the sorted material.

Thanks for the updates. They are more helpful than you realize.

Thank you. We found out we are producing more mixed metals than any of the yards can keep up with. I am afraid the only way we can sell it is by sorting it, so labor costs are not a factor. One thing that will help is having two boilers acting as chutes to drop the metal to the basement. We have enough room in the basement to stockpile the metal, until a full truck load is ready for loading. Our plan right now is prepared in one chute, unprepared in another. Our quotes for unprepared is split into torchable metal and shearable metal. All nonferrous is left on the floor it was removed from. When we have enough of different nonferrous metals, each of the chutes will be used to separate. We have to do everything by hand above the 1st floor, so it is just a matter of throwing it down the right chute.

We are learning as we go.

Patriot, that's an interesting production you have going there. After you said there was trouble with thievery, I'm wondering if you've had any more problem with that. Hoping you have cameras set up around the area. You'll enjoy the open prairie when you get done with that project.
The non-ferrous.....keep a camera on it.
Cheers..!