I've had a skip raided for metal by local Pikeys, they didn't ask, just saw them drive up and shove a load of metal stuff in the back of their van and drive off....
And thats a bad thing because?
You have more room in your skip to chuck stuff. They have saved some recyclable goods from going to landfill. Win/Win
We have a few that cruise our neighbourhood. Often leave stuff out, old frame, washing machine, general rubbish from the house. Saves me hiking it somewhere.
Me and neighbours/locals find it a useful service. They are polite and generally knock to make sure its cool to do it.
Basically can't tar everyone with the same brush, some are just entrepreneurial folk in a time where unemployment and low paid menial jobs is rife.
And thats a bad thing because?
Without asking it's theft.
However, I wasn't overly bothered in this particular case.
Well, you've lost me already so maybe you're on to something
I fart in your general direction
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Could they give a daughter or cousins bank account?
What would be the point, so then they'd get done for handling stolen goods too and add money laundering to the list?
I've no idea how it's supposed to have any effect though, how does the scrap dealer know if that roll of lead came off a genuine demolition job, or my garrage roof?
They have saved some recyclable goods from going to landfill.
A former skip lorry driver writes...
It's rare for a skip to be tipped directly in to landfill these days. They normally go to a Waste Transfer Station first to get the metal, wood, hardcore, soil etc. separated.
I'm always happy to leave anything metal out at that end of the drive and it goes and gets recycled without me having to do anything. If I've got a skip I'll always leave the metal till last and leave it on top. I've even had them knock on the door and ask if it's ok to take the metal out of the skip! While I'm sure plenty of them are crooks there's no shortage of crooks in every business.
was in the yeard yesterday.. 110 a tonne for light iron ( washing machines etc the staple of your scrappy.. the juice is in the detail.. stripping the motors from these items is where the real money is.. we strip out and seperate iron/ motors/ wire/ copper/brass and alloys from our boilers now making the 30 kilo boiler go from 3 quid to just under 30.
That fart took you two attempts - a third could have proved catastrophic.
The tatters and scrappers may make inconvinient things disappear for you but they are likely to be stripping any non-metallics from what you put at the end of your drive and hoying it in the nearest layby. They quite often hire a metal skip from a legit provider, through a semi legit business, tarmac/builder fill it with the stuff they pick up and get it weighed in as scrap from construction/ demolition. - One method of getting past the dealers gates - there are others.
but.....
ITS YOUR FING WASTE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT AND TAKE IT TO THE TIP/LICENSED SCRAP YARD YOU LAZY B**S!
IIRC the reason the new laws were brought in was in part because of the number of train delays when the signal men came into work in the morning to find all the copper wiring between them and the signals had 'been scrapped' by persons unknown in the night...
Ah, the hours I spent as a kid stripping cables to separate plastic and wire for my (electrician) dad 
You only a youngster then ninfan? Sometimes you talk like a grumpy old man 🙂
In my day we burnt the plastic off for my old man (not an electrician)
There is a forum all about it
http://scrapmetalforum.co.uk/phpbb3/index.php
Though some of them seem to just collect computer chips?
I hear theres a bloke that goes round collecting obsolete 29'er bicycles
Why go to the trouble of striping the plastic out of a fridge? Pull the motor for sure and weigh thet in. Then weigh in the fridge, complete with plastic, as all extra weight counts in the light iron category. :-). Weigh in a car at £150 a tonne and you would be daft to remove all the glass and interior first. In fact, make sure the carpet are wet, the fuel tank is full of water, and all you old junk is in the footwells. Not that anyone would ever do such a thing of course.
They cannot be paid in cash nowadays as action on metal theft has changed the regs - must be paid by cheque or into B/Acc and photo ID has to be shown. Some sites are getting round this in some ways but it's still traceable. It has made a big difference so far.
Well... this morning I was paid cash. No ID of any sort asked for.
Generally yards are getting better, elsewhere I've been paid into the bank and needed photo ID, but you can see how its going to have to be an effort to regulate them. They don't make their money from buying scrap they make if from margin between what they buy it for and can sell it for. But they can't sell what they don't have so if theres a way a blind eye can be turned it will be.
And thats a bad thing because?
Without asking it's theft.
However, I wasn't overly bothered in this particular case.
It is a big issue because as well as the fact its technically theft, they can make a mess, disturb the contents of the skip so you have to reload it, whack your neighbours car with it, damage your property, and they are trespassing. None of this is acceptable in my book. Also I believe if they do subsequently dump part of something you can get sung for the cleanup cost of its traced back to you.
We do put stuff out for the flat bedders occasionally at the end of the drive but having had skips on our drive ransacked by them too and experienced some of the issues above I have to say that I really resent that behaviour.
They cannot be paid in cash nowadays as action on metal theft has changed the regs - must be paid by cheque or into B/Acc and photo ID has to be shown. Some sites are getting round this in some ways but it's still traceable. It has made a big difference so far.
Some scrapyards now have on site cheque cashing facilities to circumnavigate the rules...
The bane of my site. I practically had a guy begging for some metal the other day. I have a very nasty looking "friend" who was visiting when said man called in again. He was asked politely to **** off. I use one lad regularly who pays me cash, we work out a deal. Copper and the more valuable stuff goes to a proper weigh in. I can still get cash but it's usually at lower price.
all the aerial riggers and satellite engineers use our skip at work. old aerials, cable, sat dishes get thrown in.
a local lad comes twice a week, climbs in and comes out with a few sacks full of stuff. it must be worth something. it seems like a hard way for a lazy workshy scumbag theiving druggie (stw standard description) to earn a living.
hats off to him imho........ 😀
Whats his name Ton, I probably know him. 😉
Tungsten carbide is £11 a kilo ATM! (not that there's much of that laid by the roadside)
A couple of years ago I project managed setting up an office furniture reuse and recyling social enterprise. We used to get loads of office furniture and filing cabinets etc. from firms relocating, gone bust, or upgrading. Stuff that wasn't resaleable was split into its constituent parts and we had a huge skip in the yard supplied to us by the local scrapyard. A couple of times we caught some guys in the skip trying to get the metal into their transit. When told politely to "F off" they got really pissy despite knowing that they were stealing from a charity. One lot even had the temerity to return the following day.
I live on a main road with Traffic Lights right outside my door.
Earlier this Year, I got a New Washing Machine and dragged the old one outside and left it on the corner in case a scrap van came past.
Went back in, locked the Gate, went to the shop and came back literally 3 mins later and it had gone.
I'm not arguing as I wanted rid. They are constantly going up and down our road.
I scrapped a couple of cars as well back in the Summer and, when I had the gates open they were constantly pulling up asking if they could take them away despite me explaining I had already arranged collection from another firm.
Power station next door's being demolished at the moment.
The (non contracted) scrappers are round it like flys on sh*t, trying to work out how to get in.
Whether you view it as a service or not is up to you, really.
Due to crackdowns on electrical recycling things like appliances are now generally gutted for compressor etc where they stand, releasing any nasty refrigerants etc and leaving a wrecked (but lighter) pos that is going to be harder to get rid of now the juicy bits are gone.
It's true that this approach is a minor improvement over fly tipping the remains after stripping it.
The amount of items belonging to me like freshly cleaned and prepped car subframes in back gardens that have accidentally been recycled by 'scrapmen', I'm not especially keen on them although I'm sure it's like any trade and there are plenty of good guys...
Find the more desperate ones are good for off-loading fencing wire. When we tow it in to the yards they are usually pretty reluctant as it tangles in the machinery. If we've got some cattle grids to sandwich it they are usually well happy though.
Have rammed fencing wire into an old oil tank that was dumped on site, cut the side out and kept crushing in the wire - nice weighty lump.
Having said that the big boys in the industry have state of the art fridge and electrical recycling plants.
I got a feeling the price of scrap is about to sky-rocket. Have seen a few scrap men out lately, where I haven't seen any for years. The last time we seemed to have so many about, scrap was not that valuable, but within about 3 months of giving away about 6 old cars and as many old trailers/muckspreaders/balers etc for nothing (had a big clear out when I took the farm over from my dad), the price of scrap had soared to an all time high. Next time I saw the scrap man he had a brand new car and a brand new transit!
My advice, if you have a load of scrap, hang on to it a for a few months and see what happens.
I was wondering about an old Marin alu frame I have sitting in the shed. Its cracked on the headtube so no good to me, Would it be worth a trip down the scrap yard ? Also have three halfords specials rusting away in the garden, Cant be worth much can they ?
I got a feeling the price of scrap is about to sky-rocket.
Not whilst we have a suppressed oil price!
I was wondering about an old Marin alu frame I have sitting in the shed. Its cracked on the headtube so no good to me, Would it be worth a trip down the scrap yard ?
about 60p/kilo - so about 90p
Also have three halfords specials rusting away in the garden, Cant be worth much can they ?
about 8p/kilo
When scrapping a car fill the boot with rocks then beat crap out of the lock.
Well it worked when we were kids.
Also have three halfords specials rusting away in the garden, Cant be worth much can they ?about 8p/kilo
Although thinking about that again, apart from the frame there will still be plenty of alu on a cheap bike, but you'd need to go to the trouble of separating it from all the steel/plastic/rubber. The rims (but not the spokes or nipples), hub-shells (but not the axel and bearings etc), crank arms collectively probably add up to more alu than your frame. But get anything other than alu in with it an you'll only be given the steel price
One of my clients is a large scrap metal yard/recycling facility.
The guys told me they now check very carefully whats in the travelling gentlefolk's load as they have been half filling the tippers with concrete & covering it up with metal before driving onto the weighbridge & tipping in the yard!
When I was renovating my house a couple of years ago we had half a dozen or so offer to take stuff for free. A few just tried wandering round the back garden uninvited (completely ignoring the front door and door bell) luckily either myself or one of the guys I had working there spotted them before the found the stockpile round the back. One of the builders said it wasn't uncommon for scrap to go missing over night if sites were unoccupied.
For all the scrap we collected from a 3 bed semi I got just over £1000.
Mix of copper (pipe and wire), lead, brass, aluminium and steel. It was well worth splitting the clean and dirty copper (cutting soldered joints etc) added 30% to the price, I didn't bother stripping the wire though, I tried it but simply took too long to do by hand to be worth it.
So yes you can make good money from it, and yes some but certainly not all are a bit dodgy! (as there are in any walk of life, from politicians and bankers to scrap metal men) no idea if any of the ones that asked at my place were dodgy or not. I did stay on site and did however see a couple of slow evening drive bys by the same vans, they didn't stop when they saw me though......
There have been a number of manhole covers which have gone missing around the local town just recently which has been in the local press.
A woman who works in our staff canteen drives a nice new Range Rover with a scrap metal business sign in the rear window, I assume her husbands, so money is definitely there to be made.
