[AT] Scrap iron

[Indiana Robinson]

	We have talked about this a number of times over the years... Scrap prices are running 
quite high now and the scrappers are really beating the bushes these days. While it will 
help me get a bit of income from some stuff that was worthless a few years back it is 
really going to hurt supply in our hobby. I was absolutely astounded by some of the pure 
trash some of them were bidding up at the auction yesterday. One pile that would not have 
half filled a shortbed pickup and was mostly tinny stuff and a couple of car wheels and 
parts of old steel lawn chairs sold for nearly $20. The remains (and I mean remains) of 
on old 24' corn elevator sold for around $25. I have a trash pickup here and much of what 
they were buying was stuff I would call rubbish instead of scrap.
	I was talking to a fellow I know that owns a good sized auto wrecking and salvage lot 
here and to another fellow that was a scrapper. The scrapper was telling us that the 
large crusher operation about 25 miles south of here had recently paid him $180 a ton for 
"dirty" engines and transmissions. "Dirty means drained but with part or all of the 
giblets still attached. On transmissions it means drained but no torque converters (I 
guess the converters hold too much weight in oil). They were also really bidding up the 
old junk electric motors from the elevator basement. I asked a scrapper I knew would give 
me a straight answer if he had to do anything to electric motors to sell them and he said 
no. Junk mower and tiller engines were selling well too, all to scrappers.

-- 
"farmer", Esquire
At Hewick Midwest
      Wealth beyond belief, just no money...

Paternal Robinson's here by way of Norway (Clan Gunn), Scottish Highlands,
Cleasby Yorkshire England, Virginia, Kentucky then Indiana. Here 100 years 
before the revolution.


Francis Robinson
Central Indiana USA
robinson at svs.net