Scraping garage doors, openers, and an insight on my experience

Been working alongside my father in the door bussiness since high school. On and off, went back to it 3 months ago after leaving a mechanic shop. Scrapwise, the shop of course had more variety and easy scores. As a body shop tech, i helped myself to the aluminum hoods, harnesses, and anything seen fit. With doors its pretty straight forward. I'll add in, many times, if theres a GD door distributor or job site nearby, those that dont scrap and need the room will throw them off , leaving them for the public.



8-10 foot doors easily fit in the bed of a pickup truck, 16+ feet is inconvenient unless a dump truck or ladder rack is involved. Easy steel profit with the doors themselves especially with insulation. With parts is where the fun begins, takedowns usually yield track and angle iron, hinges and heavy steel rollers, torsion springs are easy weight, theres about a pound of alluminum on torsion springs although this is machined on and difficult to remove. Shafts can be cut easily, spring drums can be sold for straight alluminum and have decent weight.

GD motors are a goldmine if your yard will accept them non-gutted. I usually bring $6.5 a motor. #2 Wire isnt a scarce find either. We usually end up with a 5 gal. bucket a week.

Being in this trade we find ourselves on jobsites nearly everyday, this gives me an extra chance to take a few minutes to peek into their dumpsters. Found everything from microwaves to lightning rods.

EDIT: forgot to mention, bottom rubbers are held on with a hefty strip of clean alluminum, bottom rubbers slide right off usually and allumium strip is simply held on with phillips heads on most makes of door. Size of doors also vary of course so commercial doors are easy goldmines if you ever have the oportunity to scrap one.

EDIT PT. 2: 6/27/18. SCORE! This correlates with the dumpster paragraph, not garage door related. Figured this is better than making a new thread for jobsite salvaging, im sure this forum already contains many. Making a drop at the yard tomorrow or friday. If youre a contractor on the job site with a little bit of down time and extra room, ive done very well checking dumpsters and picking up utility wire trimmings. Especially this week, just recovered my 2nd microwave and a 2' piece of #1 copper pipe with brass cupplings. My yard of choice pays $2.50/lb for #1 copper pipe, not sure for brass but needless to say its worth it to me. Got another microwave to tear down when i get home as well. Not even done for the day yet! Totally unrelated, but i needed to share the excitment haha.

Happy scraping, and lets get this money!