What Is Your Net Profit From E-Waste ? - Page 2

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

I think the OP really wants to hear that we all buy computers for ten bucks each, make twenty five and deal in tonnage...

I'm a nice guy but I'm also pretty ruthless. I'm out to provide excellent customer service and grind my freeloading competitors right into the ground. I'm not a fan of people who show up, pay 6 bucks a computer for a bunch of p4 dells then complain to me (locally I might add, because that's often how this happens) that my prices aren't high enough for them. Well, let me help you, your expectations and reality missed each other by miles sir. I will repeat over and over again, this is not an industry to get into if your not planning to take a plunge into it as your sole efforts, what it really is for most of my individual customers is a side business where they save material from targets of oppurtunity, and that I can appreciate very much. It shows hard work and being out there to get what they can and not spend too much getting it.

I'm honestly tired of the people who think there's several grams of gold in every tower. Ever since the boom, less informed shops and individuals look at me like I should be offering 40 bucks a tower. Most common phrasing "Ohh no way I can let it go for that, there's alot of gold in there." Same people call me back months later long after I've crossed them off the solicit list and ask if I'd still buy. Answer is yes, but not at my initial offer, because now I have to make an out of the way trip when it could have been handled on the spot.



Difficulties in business gentlemen. You will forever be dealing with people who think they are the leprechaun sitting on a literal pot of gold.

If it was easy everyone would do it.........Would love to pick up said material at $10 each and drive it across town and get $25 each........It has happened but those days are getting few and far between as everyone is a little more educated on ewaste than perhaps they once were...........

I made alot more last year than this year..Not to be a wet blanket but now is not the time to put out a shingle in my opinion, most metals including escrap are way down and unless you have access to alot of material I'd be more inclined to get a part time job at the gas station, your garage won't be full of scrap as you wait for enough to ship or the price to bounce back (probably not happening anytime soon) and your check will not be dependent on the flux of the markets. This is a tough business and unless you are VERY proactive your sources will dry up leaving you in a limbo without enough to ship and too much to throw away.. Again if I had to start now I wouldn't even bother. JM $.02

Well said wolf.

Originally Posted by RLS0812

I am wondering: after all your expenses ( gas, shipping, labor, taxes, storage, e.t.c.) how much money do you have left over from scrapping E-Waste ?

I am asking this to figure out a general price that I could pay folks for "stuff" and still have a few $ left over.

Items would include, but not limited to:
Desktops, laptops, cell phones, smart devices, VCRs / DVD / Blue Ray, Flat screen, other general electronics, and E-Waste in general.

Thank you very much.

I think I get what you are proposing to do. If I have guessed correctly, you want to give a little something to people for them giving something to you worth value, that you can make money on.

If this is the case, allow me to alleviate the guilt you might be experiencing.

People who are throwing out electronics, almost always are doing so because they are old, they have purchased NEW items to replace them, and they do not want to incur the penalty or cost of taking it to the dump and then paying possible hazardous waste prices to dispose of it. Instead, they can kick it to the curb, and some industrious hard working person will come by and pick it up. This is your payment for removing items from their living space, they have no time to properly dispose of themselves.

But if that doesn't convince you that you have every right to make money off of other people free junk, let me attempt once again to give you a good reason NOT to pay for e-waste whenever you can get away with it. If you were purchasing cell phones for example, how much would you be willing to pay, per phone, and feel you treated your customer right? .50 cents? A dollar? 5? If you answered 5, you are paying 4 dollars in most cases, more than what the phone is actually worth in precious metals. .50 cents and you are paying right around half of it's value, which cuts into your gross profit 50%.

I think it's an amazing service that scrappers are providing, without being directed to do so. Industrious people who are hard working, who go out of their way to remove those items people do not care to have anymore, who then break them down into smaller component parts to be sold through the right recycle streams so that they can then be re-used.

I was reading recently that close to 50% of all silver used in industry now, comes from recycling. That is all of you, can you imagine if we were only able to provide half of what industry really needed? Can you imagine what the prices for those things that use silver, specially electronics might be in that case? It would totally change the entire scope of industry.

You provide an invaluable service already, I would thankfully accept anything, anyone is willing to give you for free, and call it even. In many places, people still pay companies to take e-waste away. Many corporations still do.

Scott