Going out of business. Who can I sell unused raw materials to?

jarrettbailey · Jan 27, 2019

Hello. I have posted here before about going out of business and looking for a buyer for my machines. Many thanks to the responses. I have sold a couple of machines already outright. Now, I am trying to figure out where I would sell my unused stock for the best price. What I have ranges from SS to Aluminum to CRS to 4140. I have round, pipe, tubing, square tubing, angle, square stock, plate of different thickness and size. I'm just not sure who I can sell it to. I'd like to find a place that would just buy the whole lot, but I don't know who would do that and I have obviously never had to worry about selling my stock before. Any suggestions?

danil · Jan 27, 2019

Inventory, detailed inventory

It'll all start with a detailed inventory; unless someone is close to assess firsthand.

Rob F. · Jan 27, 2019

Is it labeled on the material still? Some places would need cert papers, if you have them = more $.
My best guess to sell would be other shops in your area that do similar work.
One of the larger steel fab shops around here posts misc metal on craigslist every now and then, just a picture of all the stock, no detailed list for CL and people come.
As a blacksmith I like 4140 for tooling so be sure to include blacksmith in your CL add.

moonlight machine · Jan 27, 2019

jarrettbailey said:
Hello. I have posted here before about going out of business and looking for a buyer for my machines. Many thanks to the responses. I have sold a couple of machines already outright. Now, I am trying to figure out where I would sell my unused stock for the best price. What I have ranges from SS to Aluminum to CRS to 4140. I have round, pipe, tubing, square tubing, angle, square stock, plate of different thickness and size. I'm just not sure who I can sell it to. I'd like to find a place that would just buy the whole lot, but I don't know who would do that and I have obviously never had to worry about selling my stock before. Any suggestions?

You may be able to sell some to the hobby guys around here. Not many businesses are going to buy it unless you have cert's. It will all be expensive to ship so you will never get anything close to what you payed for it. Probably best to sell it to the scrap man.

DDoug · Jan 27, 2019

....probably to the people that bought the machines.... :skep:

Guest · Jan 28, 2019

I was in a similar situation when I moved my shop across the country. I also sold off some machines. I gave away the less valuable scrap (magnetic stainless, junk steel) to the people that bought the machines and took the brass, aluminum, and the 300 series stainless to the scrap man. That is the best way to go unless you want to invest a lot of time. Small lengths that would fit in a flat rate box that a prototype or tool maker machinist could use like brass, stainless, aluminum, and acetal sell pretty well here and at a decent price well above scrap rate, but there is a lot of time involved cutting and shipping if you have full bar lengths. As said before no one is going to pay to have full bar lengths shipped to them, maybe you could try local Craigslist.

Bobw · Jan 28, 2019

Way back during the great recession, and the work dried up.. I needed to make some cash.

I sold boxes of random drops on e-bay.. Flat rate boxes.. And sold some of the certified
material I had on this site, and I would fill up the box with random drops for an extra $10
or something like that (it was a while ago). All different kinds of material, mild steel,
rounds and flats, 4xxx's, different stainless, different aluminums, some Ti, a bunch of
different plastics..

Just random selections.. Take a flat rate box, reinforce it good, and then start piling material
in until it hit about 50 lbs, and finish it off with plastic. Pull it all back out, take a pic, put it on
E-bay.

It paid the bills for a few months.. Though the lady at the post office was getting a little
sore from all the heavy boxes, so I'd take them around to different post offices.

Bill D · Jan 29, 2019

I bought a used shirt at a thrift store and once I got it home I found a twenty in the pocket.
Bill D

Fal Grunt · Jan 29, 2019

Bill D said:
I bought a used shirt at a thrift store and once I got it home I found a twenty in the pocket.
Bill D

Best post I have read in awhile.

To the original poster, when we closed my grandfathers tool & die shop that had been in business for 50? 60? years, we had a steel room that had pallet racking from floor to 20ft ceiling stuffed with material. 6061, 7075, MIC6, MIC8, A36, 1018, 1045, 4140 Ann, 4140PH, O1, A2, A11, D2, D6 or A6?, CPM M4, CPM 10V, many types of copper and brass, carbon, exotics, plastics, magnesium, all of this in rounds and flats. Some, like the 4140 and D2 going up to 14" rounds. Large plates and burnouts for dies.

All of it went to the scrap yard.

If you can find people that can use it and will pay you something and will be appreciative of it, sell it to them, give it to them, whatever you need to do.

powerglider · Jan 29, 2019

If you have a decent phone with video camera, fastest way to give the members here a better idea of what you have is to take a video with comments on what you have, showing the material and how it is organizied (or not). Show the access to get it out. Put the video to YouTube and then poßt the link here. Maybe go 125% of scrap pricing that you can easily get it 2 phone calls. Only sell to buyers that spend $500 or more (or whatever you feel is wworth your time to get the extra 25% instead of bringing it to the crap yard. See if you get any interest and takers in the amount of time you want to see results. Go from there?

Milland · Jan 29, 2019

If the OP has enough materials to make it worth while, there are ways to sell excess/surplus metal stock.

Search for "selling excess metal stock" on Google, there's a number of companies that will buy materials. You'll have to make sure the numbers work for you over just scrapping the materials, but with luck I'd think you could at least double scrap pricing.

It's likely that the best bets will be local dealers, or national vendors with a local presence, just due to transit costs.

Or do as Rob F. suggests and cold-call local machine shops. And I bought roughly two tons of excess stock from a local company by way of Craigslist, so it can work too.

AD Design · Jan 30, 2019

Fal Grunt said:
To the original poster, when we closed my grandfathers tool & die shop that had been in business for 50? 60? years, we had a steel room that had pallet racking from floor to 20ft ceiling stuffed with material. 6061, 7075, MIC6, MIC8, A36, 1018, 1045, 4140 Ann, 4140PH, O1, A2, A11, D2, D6 or A6?, CPM M4, CPM 10V, many types of copper and brass, carbon, exotics, plastics, magnesium, all of this in rounds and flats. Some, like the 4140 and D2 going up to 14" rounds. Large plates and burnouts for dies.

All of it went to the scrap yard.

-That must have hurt a little to do that, it hurt a little to read it.

Fal Grunt · Jan 30, 2019

AD Design said:
-That must have hurt a little to do that, it hurt a little to read it.

It hurt a lot to WATCH it. My grandfather had an auction. If I had the space, I would have bought all of it.

He wasn't an emotional/sentimental man, but I don't know how he did it. I would have cried. All of the equipment I bought, I was bidding against the scrap guys. The bigger higher end equipment went for reasonable prices and were used by other companies.

We even told a lot of our customers about the auction. With a lot of customers with repeat tooling jobs we would setup and make 4 or 6 pcs when the order was for 2. We had literally TONS of finished or partially finished tooling and components on the shelves. We had one of our biggest customers come to the auction and I begged, literally begged and pleaded with them, to buy tooling that was on the shelf. It was tooling we made for them, it was tooling that they used. The one I remember most was a stack of shrink rings. We sold them for around $1800? a piece. BIG pieces of 4140PH. There was a stack of 8-10 of them. Scrap guy bought them and dumped them in the back of his dump truck.

I remember tearing up watching big crates of 50 taper tooling being dumped in the back of dump trucks. One guy bought a crate of horizontal tooling (wish I had got that one!) that must have weighed a TON. I thought he would use it or resell it. It all went to the scrap yard. This was all new in box/package/wax tooling.

It was a REALLY eye opening experience for all of us.

demoj21 · Jan 30, 2019

To the op i would think an add on craiglist, selling all material to one buyer could net the best of getting rid of all material, and better then scrap price for the material for you, or maybe find out what shop is taking over the work you were doing and sale them the material at a nice discount but for a better price then scrap to you by far. Later Jason

Guest · Feb 1, 2019

Fal Grunt said:
We even told a lot of our customers about the auction. With a lot of customers with repeat tooling jobs we would setup and make 4 or 6 pcs when the order was for 2. We had literally TONS of finished or partially finished tooling and components on the shelves. We had one of our biggest customers come to the auction and I begged, literally begged and pleaded with them, to buy tooling that was on the shelf. It was tooling we made for them, it was tooling that they used. The one I remember most was a stack of shrink rings. We sold them for around $1800? a piece. BIG pieces of 4140PH. There was a stack of 8-10 of them. Scrap guy bought them and dumped them in the back of his dump truck.

Some businesses have some really strange rules and practices. They possibly could not be allowed to buy anything unless they could assign it to a job and had an immediate need for them. When the limousine building industry was pretty much killed off by the last recession I switched from OEM to job shopping. I was also in the process of lightening the load for a cross country move I called some of my few customers that were still in business and offered products at 15-25 cents on the dollar compared to what they were paying. They all said the same thing, they could not buy anything that wasn't going to a future build they had already booked no matter how big of a discount.

I saw an even worse practice. A large aerospace connector company I worked for decades ago would throw perfectly good valuable items in the trash. When anything was upgraded what was replaced was thrown away, company policy, they could not give it away or donate it because they were not allowed to show favoritism. I constantly saw tens of thousands of dollars of computers, phones, shelving, tables etc,etc in large dumpsters. The plant was surrounded by barbed wire fencing and guard shacks or I definitely would have been dumpster diving.

hanermo · Feb 1, 2019

Steel costs about 1.5€ / kg, basic tool steel (F1 calibrado).
The scrap yard would likely pay about 0.15€.

I would go to my local steel supplier, where I buy my metals.

They would probably pay about half new, or 0.75€ / kg, on 3 m (half) or 6 m full length bars, and would come and pick it up themselves with their truck and load themselves.
So I would get 4x scrap price.

Failing that, many local jobshops would buy the stuff -- given I have 100+ invoices showing what the stuff is and what I paid for it.

Failing that, the local metal supplier would tell me which customer of theirs deals with fences and ironmongery- no certs needed.

Fal Grunt · Feb 1, 2019

Dualkit said:
Some businesses have some really strange rules and practices. They possibly could not be allowed to buy anything unless they could assign it to a job and had an immediate need for them. When the limousine building industry was pretty much killed off by the last recession I switched from OEM to job shopping. I was also in the process of lightening the load for a cross country move I called some of my few customers that were still in business and offered products at 15-25 cents on the dollar compared to what they were paying. They all said the same thing, they could not buy anything that wasn't going to a future build they had already booked no matter how big of a discount.

I saw an even worse practice. A large aerospace connector company I worked for decades ago would throw perfectly good valuable items in the trash. When anything was upgraded what was replaced was thrown away, company policy, they could not give it away or donate it because they were not allowed to show favoritism. I constantly saw tens of thousands of dollars of computers, phones, shelving, tables etc,etc in large dumpsters. The plant was surrounded by barbed wire fencing and guard shacks or I definitely would have been dumpster diving.

The tier 1 automotive supplier I worked for was the same. It was appalling what they threw away. I remember I spent a couple days on a towmotor ferrying banded pallets of brand new sheet metal to a semi truck dumpster. I asked if I could purchase it and I was told absolutely not. Another time they scrapped hundreds of cat 40 holders that were less than 2 years old. BECAUSE some office moron, I mean monkey, decided it was a metric company and no longer would use any inch end mills/tooling.

I am sure you likewise have dozens of stupid stories.

The guys in the tool room had a saying. We dont want the money the make, they can keep it, we want the money they throw away.

Which, on a pertinent note, a friend just text me, the company he works for is throwing away all their 1/8” increment fasteners, engineering decided they will only use 1/4” increment fasteners. I told him to take as much as he can!

D.D.Machine · Feb 1, 2019

I would think your wasting your time ,,, I go to the local auctions and for the most part its a couple scrap guys fighting over who can buy the junk so they can fill there crack pipe that week ...

If there a small start up shop they don`t have a lot of money to buy stock to put in the corner and if there a bigger shop with money they all ready have there own pile in the corner.

Guest · Feb 1, 2019

Fal Grunt said:
Which, on a pertinent note, a friend just text me, the company he works for is throwing away all their 1/8” increment fasteners, engineering decided they will only use 1/4” increment fasteners. I told him to take as much as he can!

On the flip side I had a friend who worked for a place that built custom machines, a lot of them were one offs. They made unique products and had a very high profit margin, but they did not want the hassle of stocking inventory and everything was ordered by the job. What was unused went in the dumpster. Fortunately they told their good employees what was going to get trashed and when allowing them to dumpster dive. Sometimes my friend would come home with a pick up truck bed full of fasteners, wire, tubing and bar stock. I still have boxes of fasteners and tubing I still use I got from him over 20 years ago.

true temper · Feb 2, 2019

This might be an option for you. Used Construction, Agricultural Equip., Trucks, Trailers & more I have seen a lot of stuff go for way more than its worth. I have a good friend that’s a salesman for them in the Dallas, Shreveport area. PM me if you are interested.

Going out of business. Who can I sell unused raw materials to?

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