Also, make sure you have a magnet handy. Use it to make sure you have no steel on your aluminum pieces. If you bring in a hunk of metal and it has something hanging off of it that attracts a magnet, the scrapyard guys will probably catch it and then you will get .10/lb for that piece instead of .50 or whatever.

Also, to get good prices for the copper, it has to be taken off the motor. This is sometimes a pain in the butt, but otherwise if you take the motor in whole you will get .25 a lb for it. Copper prices are falling quickly, as in by the day, so you might want to tear down that motor and go sell the copper first thing if you don't plan on getting the whole thing done quickly.