$0.60 a pound for extension cords ?

hey guys ive been buying wire and motors from a local yard. I recently got a wire stripper and am getting faster at using it . I Have the opportunity to buy extension cords at 60 cents a pound , I can pick which ones I want and cut the plugs and connectors off . the reason I pick extension cords because their price On THHN and ROMEX is far to high to make a profit. So do you guys think this is a good price ?

thanks mechanic I appreciate it . Just have to strip em fast , time is money.

what do you think about buying motors at $0.40 cents a pound mechanic?

personally i would buy the extension cords at .60 per pound and take them to the yard for 1.00 per pound. real fast and easy money

i been getting .70 lb for any wire mixed computer speaker wire or Christmas lights etc ...

yea I know the yard only pays .20 pound for motors but they charge .40 a pound , that's what they say because they have to make money. and the extension cords are probably 38% recovery according to our friend doctor copper

you need to check around at different yards. I cut the ends off all my power/extension cords and throw them in a bucket. The yard I go to pays me as #1 insulated every time, and that's after they inspect the buckets. Never a word about being anything less. Recently been getting $1.40-$1.50 for #1 insulated, so your investment is well worth it even if you don't strip them. Motors are $0.25 per pound.

Many of the industrial electric motors i come across have been tossed because they have burnt out. It is really a mess trying to get out burnt copper. My last big motor grossed weight was 288lbs. it was a 20hp and an older model. The armature weighed alot, the housing weighed alot and a pain to try to cut. I think i took about 40 lbs of copper off of that one.
But IF i had paid .40 a pound like you want to, that would cost about $115.... the copper would have sold roughly about $120@ $3lb and the rest of the metal about $17 @.07lb. so you would have made about $22 minus labor....ALOT of time.... You also never know how burnt the inside wiring is, so I personally would not recommend buying motors at that price.

By me #2 ins wire is $1.05 lb
Elect motors is .22 lb

I would buy the wire and flip it if I could at that price. Not sure on stripping it due to how much you would lose on the insulation. And no on the motors at that price.

one thing ill point out .ext cords have very soft insulation .ik know my wire stripper hates them and does not strip them properly

60 is not to bad I would say at the higher end if anything saving on to it for a bit could make ya some higher profit I bought a nice machine for $1200 with $200 being shipping about 3months ago now and it paid for itself in about 10 days so it was worth it but right now I am having a harder time with getting enough to keep it going so I am branching out to buy from other places as well but my yards near me will not sell me anything bigger than xmas lights and such but still doing about 150-200lbs a week clean so it works and saves a lot of time and it does do romex as well so I am trying to find a lot of cable/sat people to hook up with for wire and boxes and such

Originally Posted by redcrossnj

what do you think about buying motors at $0.40 cents a pound mechanic?

with some experimenting, you might be able to figure out which ones to buy and which ones to leave behind. 2 big variables are copper % and time/effort to take apart.

Travis,
Which stripper did you buy for $1200? It sounds like you are having good luck with it, especially with smaller wire.

Jon.

My bet for $1200 is a mini diablo or one of the similar ones...they have slots for each gauge of wire and it also does romex. I looked at a tom of those before I just bought a drill powered one until I rank up the ount of wire I strip. The motorized ones are pretty fast and can churn out quite a bit per hour.