Scrap steel--does higher quality = higher scrap price?

Hello sawmilleng

Of course your local scrap dealer will not tell you.

Perhaps he separates your high quality alloy steels from the old car bodies and general steel scrap, then receives the "bonus" himself.

I see you may be from Canada, but if you add to your "Profile" your actual location, it may be possible to assist.

I know here in New Zealand that metals scrap is mostly paid for at "lumped metals rates", but at least one scrap dealer I used to sell scrap metals to, would pay extra if you asked for the additional payment for the high-cost alloy steel scrap like you have.

Kind Regards....

Hi Fellows,

Here in GA USA were receiving about $8 per hundred weight for raw scrap steel and we seperate too the othe metals to get a higher price because combined metals are paid at the lowest rate. Today I sold a car that we scraped the motor rear end front end axels interior wheels and any other sellable part and the raw vehicle of 1200 LBS only brought a little over 97 dollars. Thats the scrap price for any raw steel at that yard today.

I would negotiate with them when you have a large quantity & a better quality scrap, it might just pay off, because they would all like to tie up the supply unto themselves. They might even set a vehicle there for your use, if your supply demands it.

Good luck getting more money !

Best Regards.

Joe

Most often the scrap is chewed up and used to throw in the furnace to get the process of melting going. They also use scrap to dilute the furnaces contents if the presence of certain minerals or alloys is too high. I have never heard of good quality scrap being marketed for more money as it is all mixed. The only thing they do is separate alloys, steel, copper, pure non ferrous. Most other stuff goes on the pile and they do not worry too much.

We have a problem here of late that the "recyclers" (read thieving crooks) are allowing the nice new age travellers to bring them new cables for data, telephone and power. Guess where they get that from? They pull the stuff out of the ground with trucks and steal it when it is being build or refurbished. I just wish they would police the recycling industry a bit better as it puts a lot of people in financial problems and even in danger. You need the ambulance and some asshole has nicked your telephone line.....

A local scrap yard here sorts there scrap with an x-ray fluorescence unit that picks up the major metals and alloys. They then place it in various bins they then sell for a rate for that type.

The x-ray unit is costly, and it would not pay you to get one. If you stored them until you got 10 tons of one type you would be able to try for more.

Your blade makers are the ones to approach, as they buy and make blades to sell to you and recycle their scrap blades. Possibly they migght help. If you have 100 pounds/year I would say forget it

It definately pays to sort your scrap,,,I own a small yard! If you have siding or tin types of steel. I know I will not pay much for it because i get docked on the other end!

3'x18 inches is prefered steel size, if it be larger,,you get docked! if your steel has rubber mountings in it,,you get docked or get gate price.

This guy doesnt know too much! Police check Salvage yard right along, and we will turn in any one who doesnt have a legit reason to have rolls of new copper to sell!,,You better believe your getting turned in!

High quality scrap to a melt shop is low residual steel.

High tramp elements in small batches of scrap (less than a truckload or 20 tons) are more nuisance.

Segregate your carbide.

Segregate these blades if you like, you'll not be paid any more from them that would cover the cost of separate transport.

milo "5 years experience in an electric furnace shop"

Prices can vary a lot from region to region. I have a friend who owns a yard on the East coast a year ago, he was getting $200 a ton for car bodies when i was only getting $120. A market can literly drop over night, we had trucks loaded last summer and were bif $120 on it on Wensday night. Thursday morning they called and dropped it to $90 a ton and by the time the trucks reached the terminal at 2pm they gave me $75. And I know we hauled one more load at $50 and we shut it off for the year! If your local foundry needs product they will pay! But when the pipeline is full they will pull the rug out too!

Of course it pays to sort your steel. If you want to sell for gate price be dumb. Bicycle steel or washmachine steel is not the same as beam steel. Size make a differenct too! If you haul in old combines that need to be cut to size we discount! If you have all small sizes of cast steel size of your fist or foot there is a premium, but if its a large press or dozer thats 12 feet high and weighs 200,000 its a big deduct. as low as $5 a ton as it has to be broken down to size! Our help doesnt work for nothing either. They want health insurance and decent wages too!

I dont know what Georgia Salvage yards do, but we write downs the names and id's of anyone who sells to us. The Sheriff is wellcome anytime to come in. Most stolen stuff is an inside job when it comes to pipe or wiring! It's one of your staff, his drinking buddies, a former employee who knows where you keep it,,how you handle it,,whats hot,,whats not! I know we dont look the other way on theft! Because we have a lot of our stuff stolen at night or walks out the gate! I know our biggest thief was ,,just like i stated!

Advertise your scrap saw bales on a knife makes form or mail list. I expect they will give you several time more than your scrap dealers depending on how thick it is.

If you have the thickness the fellows that just cut an grind knives from steel need they will offer a good deal as it saves them a lot of work.

Good luck

GC

To the guy worried about theft! It has been a big deal the last 24 months. I am certainly not saying it isn!t or it dont happen here, because it does. But most of the managers are on the lookout for buyers who they dont know, who otherwise dont haul in product! In Florida in 2007 a semi load of processed copper was being shipped from the terminal on its way to the smelter. 50,000 lbs ++ at close to $4 per pound. these guys knew what they were doing, and how to get rid of it! Yes someone has to know what is going on to get this kind of deals thru the system. Somebody knows how to work the papers, or has a friend on the inside someplace. There are rumors of Organized crime being big players in some areas of the country! I know our little Sanford and Son operation, we dont mess with any off color deals. But when we buy scrap at auctions, you have to be right there and load or someone will take it. The gate to our yard is almost always open and stuff does walk off, but we also get a lot of stuff dropped off to process. For instance, a plumber brought to big loads of water heaters. We clean the copper and brass fittings out, the control boxes. We then load them in autos being crushed. If they go to the land fill he pays $3 each to bury them. As a pile of water heaters or terminal will pay you $10 a ton maybe but preped and placed in cars they will bring $125 a ton and they will be ground up and processed properly by a state of the art plant. So which is better plant them in the ground or process them properly! \Does it pay?? it is a lot of work! But i could be making loan shark loans on houses instead, right!

There are about 11 grades of Aluminum, depending on how much steel is attached, use of the Aluminum. Window and door frames that are high quality extruded stuff are highest quality. Mixed steel and al such as alternators or mounting brackets may have steel bolts stuck or attached in that form it is called Breakage, as it needs to be broken up and separated breakage is worth about .12 cents a pound. The Al may be worth .40 cents a pound may .50 cents depending on my mood and the market. You can break the al block and separate the steel and other metals from the Al. in several ways. A good old 16 lb sledge hammer will test to see what kind of man you are, real quick. A press with jaws will work, a hydraulic shear with large alligator type jaws will snap shut and chew through this stuff,,,make sure no finger or hands are attacted,,or they will be ready for wall mounting,. It is very rough and dangerous work, in my area many of the foriegn nationals have been active in this field. I was told they take a tote bin, dump it on the floor of their shop and 8 -10 guys start in with sledges on Sat morning while the rest of you are sleeping inand by noon they are picking up all the pieces and putting it back in the tote boxes to sell. Very lowteck, very dangerous due to flying pieces, very profitable. They are usualy all family and have day jobs during the week, but this is the car payment money,,sending back to Serbia for mom to come to this country! Or Mexico! I know that last 1 hour at Sanford and son! The son was throwing the sledge at Sanford(me)!

Answer to your question. Yes, it helps to segregate your scrap,always and always. Scrap is sold by grades. There are many factors that come to play in this equation. Alloys, thickness, Length,what the market is needing at any given time. I just got back from S. Korea and spent two weeks getting orders for the Export of Scrap Metal,Non-Ferrous and Ferrous. Yes your local Scrap Dealer does benefit from the separation of metals. If you are willing to do the separation the benefit depending on Quantities could be worthwhile. I have been in the Scrap business for 32 years third generation, or as we used to call the industry the JUNK BUSINESS. The new generation did not like that term it didn't sound professional enough anyway.If you have enough Tonnage or Quantities you could bypass your local scrap dealer and sell direct,I have been setting this structure up with all my Manufactures with great success, why pay the yard if you have a grade of scrap that does not need to be prepared and is ready to be shipped to a Foundry or Mill in the US. or overseas, Just a thought.Good Luck

If you can find an end user for the scrap saw blades you have I think you will find that they will a great deal more for what you have than the middle men will.

Everyone that takes owner ship has to handle it, sort it and find a buyer and most of all make a profit.

You may as well have as much of the profit as you can get. I feel sure it more than pay for the added cost of sorting, cleaning, packing and shipping.

All you have to do is ask around and see what they offer.

good luck

GC.

Thank you all, for your thoughtful replies!

We will check around and see if we can get some leads to resell back to the people who make the saw steel. Or at least try to negotiate a better deal with our local guy.

The suggestion to sell to knife makers was also interesting. Sounds like a good little eBay business...although I think we generate enough waste saw steel to supply the world's knife business! I think we would generate a shipping container per year of the stuff, although a lot of it is too small to make knives from.

In our neck of the woods, we are lucky to see $50/ton for scrap steel at any time. We are located in the southeast corner of BC, Canada.

Thanks,

Jon.

A container load of saw steel with nothing else in it should find a pretty good price some where. But freight can be a problem from way back in the woods. Finding the buyer and keeping the other junk out of it is the trick. The purer it is the more its worth.

There are also knife makers that forge their own blades. The one that make Damascus steel may be interested in the smaller pieces. They layer them with wrought iron and weld them together. Then fold and weld and fold and weld .............. and weld. It makes a very pretty knife.

GC

If you can keep the different grades separate you can get a higher value if that particular material is a high dollar material.

However if they find one piece of an inferior quality metal in a delivery of metal they will pay the value of the lower quality metal for the entire amount.

Let's say we're talking about Stainless Steel. Stainless Steel is obviously different from Mild Steel. If you show up with a 3 ton load of Stainless scrap metal and they find one piece of 5"x5" 12 gauge mild steel sheet metal in that 3 ton load of Stainless Steel they are going to pay for 3 tons of mild steel scrap.

And that is a big dollar difference.

I don't know who you are selling your scrap to. Jesse james!!!! Your scrap should be calculated on a % basis not a price based on a contamination factor. I would look elsewhere to sell your metal.

Purity in scrap is important, but a scrap dealer who knocks down a whole load for 1 piece of the wrong stuff must feel he has you at his mercy, and feels you have no place else to go. Since you get the load ready for him, each piece must be sorted by you, just take care.

In truth, a small amount of contamination is built into the recycling process and they melt this recycled metal in an electric furnace and assay it and adjust it to the final alloy by adding pure metals.

I didnt see anything on either of these sites that suggests that these firms remelt lots of steel scrap.

Logan is remelting aluminum.

Aline iron and metals is not remelting steel (Ferrous or furrous!) either. they do have a certified Aluminum sweat furnace. Not for steel.

Both do seem to handle ferrous scrap, but they aren't remelting nor assaying.

If by "they melt this recycled metal in an electric furnace and assay it and adjust it to the final alloy by adding pure metals." you mean the final steel maker using an electric furnace to melt all of the scrap make a 100+ ton batch of steel, the "assay" is really a ladle analysis of the entire heat, not an "assay" of the batch of scrap.

In my days of scavenging while on layoff from the steel mills, our loads would be graded, and more pay per pound when we would bring in heavy sections, and far less when we brought in white goods(old appliances) or mixed loads.

Its a subjective call, and the scrapyards don't tend to make mistakes in your favor.

my 2 cents.

milo

yes, the total melt is adjusted to a final spec by additions of various alloying metals until it conforms to a standard they sell on. Sometimes they just melt it and pour ingots and mark them and use them later. This usually happens when they would find the batch harder to bring to a spec in the melt at that time.

There is a tendency for he copper/aluminum/zinc guys to be smaller as the higher value of their metals allows this. Steel is so cheap they have to be large or heat and handling eat them alive. SS is a lot more valuable and goes with the copper/aluminum/zinc range of values, and often more. Then there are the valuable ones. Tantalum, Titanium, etc

Steel is usually lots cheaper than the copper/brass/aluminum lots, so handling is a greater comonent of the value and yes, scrap yards arbitrarily defraud the small scrappies who bring in metals for cash by low grading them. Best is to hold and sort until you have a truckload of a category you can get a better price for. Many accumulate for a year or more and play the metal markets. Many of these guys are hand to mouth = easy to cheat. They also try to cheat back wih hidden steel in copper etc.

"Best is to hold and sort until you have a truckload of a category you can get a better price for. "

ABsolutely!

milo

Dear Sawmilleng:

I know a dealer who buys scrap steel, I told him about your posting and he is interested in talking to you. His name is Michael and his number is (714) 596-3609, Orange County, California. Please give him a call. Thanks.

Tony

Thanks for the lead, Tony. I'll ask our purchasing boss to give him a call.

Jon.