Scrap steel price? a give a way?

I just gave away 2 1/2 tons of scrap steel, I called for a price first on Thursday, yard said 40/ton... not grate but the stuff is in my way. So I haul it in , dump it and weigh out, go to the pay window, a cv 19 thing....and get a penny a pound, I asked why and was told that was the new good price,,BS I say but I cant reload it...pushed in the big pile by now.8 years ago it would have been $1000.00. It was not worth the time to load and haul it. Now what do I do now? I have 300 tons more to remove in my yard but not a .01 / lb, just plan to let it sit or haul it to Wash state if you tell me the price is better.What is the going price where you all are at??...Phil

One of the yards here stopped taking it. Other yard sent out 4-5 scrap gondolas is down to one. Local freight was 10 cars long. Now its 1-2 cars. Cant believe it pays for the diesel fuel and crew.

On the bright side the drunks and addicts will still haul off your stuff if you dont watch it. So they dont know yet.

Are you participating in the evening howling I saw on TV?

3-4 cents per pound. If it is huge cast chunks or drops that would be the 4 cent price. 3 cents for sheet metal painted or not. A couple years ago I got 8.5 cents for machine carcasses. That is in Central Virginia, Richmond area.

Steel scrap hasn't been worth hassling with now for several years. Barely so for aluminum, stainless and red metals.

I give all mine to whoever shows up wanting scrap.

I generate so little valuable scrap it isn't worth my time or to pay a guy to haul it back. Barely covers time and fuel most times, most times not at all. Small stuff I just trash. Anything substantial I put out back until some scrapper comes knocking.

When I moved shop a few months back we filled up a box truck with scrap, a couple tons of steel, and hundreds of pounds of stainless and aluminum. I think we got like $300 for the truckload. We had 3 guys working all day cleaning out the shop to get that.

No friggen way am I paying good wages for a guy to sit in line at the scales for $50 in scrap.

Chinese demand for all scrap warped the market for the better part of the last 20 years, and anyone waiting for the return of prices of a few years ago is gonna have a long wait.

Pre China demand, back in the 90's, yards wouldn't take any painted, galvanized, or otherwise coated light gauge steel even if you were willing to give it to them. You had to haul it to the landfill and pay to dump it. Had a friend who was in the car crushing and hauling business at the time, and he'd take take our galvanized sheet scrap (couple tons a month) and pile it into junk cars prior to crushing. He'd make a few bucks off of it, and we'd save the landfill fees and an hour or so of extra labor and truck operating expenses for the round trip to the landfill.

Bare light gauge steel would bring around a penny a pound, and good heavier scrap was 2 to 3 cents, depending on whether it could be loaded straight into a gondola or required further prep prior to shipping. Not far off from where prices are today.

If you look at current steel prices, assuming you're buying enough to get good pricing, and compare that to current scrap prices, the ratio of scrap to new prices are in the range of historical norms rather than the ratios prevalent during the more recent scrap price bubble. Obviously, with the economy as it is right now, scrap is likely to be below even the long term norm as that always occurs when steel demand drops even temporarily and scrap starts to pile up in the yards.

All that said, the yard probably did beat the OP out of half of what was due him. Shorting the customer on the scales or changing the price after the goods are unloaded is standard procedure for more than a few characters in the scrap business.

Personally, I'd rather have stable material prices and pay no mind to scrap prices than to have to waste time chasing quotes for every job to find out whether prices may have doubled or halved compared to what they were a month ago.

its so low out here in seattle area I have been throwing all my alum chips the dumpster for the last 2 months ,,, its was .15 a pound then it dropped to .12 a pound and the last time I called they told me .08 if I got it there in the next 3 days ,,, that is $160 a ton for 6061 chip clean and dry ,,, on a normal month I make about 4 tons of chips ,, I cant spend a full day screwing with chips to get $640 bucks ... its just cheaper for my to throw them out and not screw with them ,,

I have a feeling we are about to have a real buyers market on machine tools as shops begin to fail and the scrappers stop buying.

Recently near me there was a 140,000 lb machine (1970's manual machine, good condition) sold for $275 to a scrapper. There was concern it wasn't worth the work to dismantle and move it.

Its not just steel. Alum isn't worth much. Titanium is going for 10-14 cents per lb, but cost north of 30/lb. Carbide is 5-6 a lb on a good day. Way too much scrap floating around right now. Shit, you can barely get a song and dance for scrap cars now.

There has been a shopping cart sitting in the alley behind my place for a month. I am in metro Milwaukee, that would not have lasted 8 hours a year ago.
The cart sitting is my barometer of low scrap prices.

Phil in Montana said:

I just gave away 2 1/2 tons of scrap steel, I called for a price first on Thursday, yard said 40/ton... not grate but the stuff is in my way. So I haul it in , dump it and weigh out, go to the pay window, a cv 19 thing....and get a penny a pound, I asked why and was told that was the new good price,,BS I say but I cant reload it...pushed in the big pile by now.8 years ago it would have been $1000.00. It was not worth the time to load and haul it. Now what do I do now? I have 300 tons more to remove in my yard but not a .01 / lb, just plan to let it sit or haul it to Wash state if you tell me the price is better.What is the going price where you all are at??...Phil

Click to expand...

A) They should have notified you that the price just dropped before you unloaded.

B) Just in case you hadn't ran the numbers: $40/tonne (not ton) is $.0178/#

C) So $.01/# is actually over half of what you should have been expecting.
Not like you went from $40 to $.01 like your post reads on the surface.


1) Right now the mills are shuttered, or at least dooing any major maintenance that they can right now as demand is really low.

2) Right now - I bet a LOT of fence rows have been cleaned up. Junk cars trailered out. Etc, in the name of "I've got all this time to clean things up right now."

So the ratio of demand to supply is beyond silly.

My local yard decided to just close rather than offer folks to unload for free.
They may be open by now - IDK.

I have a pair of 12Y hoppers that need dumped, but I think that I will start to dump chips in an outbuilding for now in stead.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Here ia a list of what our recycler is paying in PA.

Retail + price is >100 lbs. unless otherwise noted.

Effective April 28th, 2020, 3:30 pm.

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Material Retail Retail +
Vinyl Siding & Vinyl Building Materials $0.02/lb $0.03/lb
Bare Bright Copper Wire $1.80/lb $1.88/lb
#1 Copper $1.74/lb $1.81/lb
#2 Copper $1.61/lb $1.68/lb
Light/Sheet Copper $1.53/lb $1.60/lb
Insulated Copper Cable $1.13/lb $1.18/lb
Insulated #1 Copper $0.89/lb $0.92/lb
Insulated #2 Copper Wire $0.50/lb $0.52/lb
Low Grade Copper Wire $0.02/lb $0.0225/lb
Copper Electric Motors, Alternators, and Starters $0.04/lb $0.05/lb
Red Brass $1.27/lb $1.32/lb
Yellow Brass $1.02/lb $1.07/lb
Clean Auto/Truck Radiators $1.02/lb $1.07/lb
Copper Aluminum Radiators $0.72/lb $0.76/lb
Aluminum Cans $0.22/lb $0.24/lb
Aluminum Siding $0.17/lb $0.19/lb
Sheet Aluminum $0.16/lb $0.18/lb
Cast Aluminum $0.16/lb $0.18/lb
Aluminum Car Wheels $0.35/lb $0.37/lb
Irony Aluminum $0.02/lb $0.0225/lb
Lead $0.33/lb $0.35/lb
Wheel Weights $0.04/lb $0.05/lb
Auto/Truck Batteries $0.21/lb $0.22/lb (>500 lbs)
Non-Magnetic Stainless $0.18/lb $0.20/lb
Light Iron $2.00 per 100 lbs $2.25 per 100 lbs ( > 1,000 lbs)
Automobiles $2.25 per 100 lbs (Incomplete) $3.25 per 100 lbs (Complete)
#1 Steel-Prepared (All pieces 5 ft x 2 ft or under) $3.25 per 100 lbs $3.75 per 100 lbs ( > 6,000 lbs)
#1 Steel-Unprepared $2.75 per 100 lbs $3.25 per 100 lbs ( > 6,000 lbs)
Steel Turnings $0.00 per 100 lbs $0.00 per 100 lbs ( > 6,000 lbs)
Computers, Printers, & Copiers $0.35/lb fee $0.35/lb fee
Computer Mice, Keyboards, and Miscellaneous Electronic Scrap $0.35/lb fee $0.35/lb fee
TVs, Computer Monitors, & LCDs/LEDs $35.00 fee each (42" screensize and under) $70.00 fee each (over 42" screensize and all wood console models)

You need to pay them to take electronic stuff. $70.00 for a TV. This is why they are laying along side the roads.

My favorite uncle told me 60 years ago two things that are not generally known. First, it is just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one, and, if you don't like to work, and don't mind stealing, open a scrap yard. He was right on both counts.

As Ive mentioned before on this forum ,I got a warning on 26 Jan 2020 from my buyer that due to the China outbreak ,all contract rates were cancelled wef 5am that day....and also note one US producer has closed 80% of remelt furnaces due to lockdowns....So ,just hang in there and sell when the price is up......I might mention main buyers offshore are Turkey ,India ,China ,Vietnam ....all virus hit in a big way.

I told my guys to start throwing it all in the trash. WE took a big load up and got 1/3 of what I would have gotten 8 months ago. It's waste now.

I got rid of some 316 turnings today as all my bins were full, got what would be $.23/lb USD.
I thought it was gonna be worse. Place is pretty much empty, never seen it cleaned out like that.
I had just 1 bin of steel chips/junk so I dump it by that pile and don't even weigh it.

I'm not sure how it is post-covid around here. I actually need to get a load over to our favorite yard to free up some barrels. Our scrapper is just around the corner from us (less than 1/4 mile) so gas doesn't matter, just need a free hour to load and unload. Even bad prices are better than nothing IMO, but I'm also not against piling it somewhere out of sight on our property for later. Then I just need to go out and buy some more steel drums....

What is everyone’s prediction will scrap price ever come back up to where it was 8 or 10 years ago?

true temper said:

What is everyone’s prediction will scrap price ever come back up to where it was 8 or 10 years ago?

Click to expand...

You mean $450 ton for steel? Dont really see that happening any time soon, if ever.

I just heard steel is at ~$65 a ton here currently. I haven't taken much in myself in a long time, but the idea of just throwing scrap in the trash bugs me. It's usually not too hard to find a half decent guy to haul it off for you whose family will benefit from the small sum of money, and the fact that resources get recycled instead of stuffed in a landfill is a factor for me too.