One man's trash. Amirite?

You might be wondering what you are looking at. It's a steel bin full of aluminium beams.

So while at the job site I saw this and asked what they were doing with it. They told me it was going to be sold for scrap. Scrap steel.

There are two problems with that, in my mind. First, you are getting way less weight in the bin with aluminium and then you are selling something that is worth $560/ton for $105/ton.

I asked if I could take it and he asked if I'd give $2 per beam. I said I would take one and see what it was worth and because I was going into town to buy pizza for the crew, I just made a trip to the scrapyard with one of the beams. This is without cleaning them up. If I took the screws and inserts out I would get $.54/lb. I was happy with this and told them I was going to be back with a bunch of them.

This is the sample

It was -27C so I decided after paying the $106 for my 53 beams I would just drive to town and sell them as is because I would have to drive all the way home to unload them when I could just drive into town and make a bit less but not have to handle them while spending an extra $25 in gasoline. I figured I had 1000 lbs and would get $370 for my 3 hours of work, gas and the $106 I paid out. I might make $200 profit for my time but it seemed like a good trade.

This is reality

As you can see from the bottom, I was downgraded to $.28/lb when I showed up with the truckload. It was the boss that inspected the load so I couldn't really argue that he didn't know what he was doing and luckily I had more weight than expected so it balanced out but I wish I had have brought it all in to the girl who graded the first one.

I'm going back for the rest. Probably two more truckloads but these will be cleaned up and I'll get my $.54/lb. I took the first load in cash so I can pay for all the rest and then will use the profits from the other two loads to help with the costs of getting the business up and running. I'm hoping to get 1000 lbs of clean aluminium extrusion and if so, I will get $540. It will take a few hours to pull the screws but that's okay. It's therapeutic.

Oh Yeah

This came in the mail today. It's all getting more real.