Unlock Capital in Your Scrap Metals
A man in Connecticut – we’ll call him Pete in this post because he asked us not to use his real name – has a story that might be familiar to you. Why? Because many people end up in situations like his.
Pete has a welding and metal fabricating business that handles all kinds of work. Last year, a university asked him to make a special chair that was needed for a medical research project. Often, people ask him to do small welding projects, like reattaching a trailer hitch that was coming loose from the back of a truck. Pete also does brazing and spot welding repairs on a lot of lawnmowers. Recently, a restaurant asked him if he could help design and fabricate an unusual service counter out of stainless steel – “something like you wouldn’t see anywhere else in the world,” Pete says. Pete employs two very skilled employees, but he shares the work with them.
The shop itself is big, about 75 x 100 feet. He has a small office at the front of his shop where he has a desk and occasionally meets with customers and vendors. The office is spotless because he likes to have a neat area to work on the books, make calls, order supplies, and run the business side. But last year he realized that his shop area had become, as he told us, “Chaos!” The storage shelves, once empty, had become home to pieces of mowers, bits and pieces of leftover scrap metal, you name it. Outside in the yard, the chaotic situation continued, with bits and pieces everywhere.
It was a situation that is typical for businesses where a lot of new business comes in every week and the whole enterprise moves forward with a lot of business and energy. Whoever has time to clean up? It’s hard when every day new paying projects come in.
Pete Gets the Situation in Control
At a certain point, Pete realized he had to do something to get his premises organized and cleaned. The clutter was beginning to bother his workers. And it was giving the wrong impression to his clients. “People would come in, look around, and wonder whether we were really the kind of shop they wanted. We looked so messy, they wondered if we would do a good job for them.”
So earlier this summer, Pete and his staff set aside two weeks to get things in order. They rented some small dumpsters and placed them around the yard. Dumpsters were bigger receptacles than what they really needed, but it was better to have oversized containers where Pete could sort his scrap. One dumpster was for aluminum, another for ferrous metals, another for copper, and so on. The men would pick up stuff from a shelf or wherever it was sitting, walk out into the yard, and toss whatever they were carrying into the right bin.
After only a few days, they were already making amazing progress. They were able to get all the non-precious metals, like a lot of steel and iron bits, to a local scrapyard. Also, they had more brass and bronze than they were expecting, including about 300 pounds of old brass doors that had come from a local bank. All that stuff didn’t put much money in Paul’s pocket – actually less than $100.00. But at least that stuff was gone, and it was out of their way in the shop.
What surprised Pete, and you might get a similar surprise if you decide to clean up a business of your own, was the amount of silver that he was able to reclaim from welding scrap. “We swept up more than 25 pounds of arc welding rods and brazing rods,” Pete says with a laugh.
He sent those bits and pieces to a precious metal refinery and got a few dollars for them. “Enough money to hire a painter to come in and freshen up our walls,” Pete says with a laugh.
But he knows that he had done the right thing. So our question to you today is, how much money do you think you could get for having us recycle the scrap that has become an eyesore in your business?
Only you know – it depends on the kind of business you are in. If you make or distribute electronic devices, for example, you are talking about gold scrap, and you could stand to make more money than our friend Pete did.
But you will never know unless you attack that clutter. It’s the right thing to do for your business and tackling it could earn you a bigger payback than you thought possible. Give us a call at 800-426-2344. Let’s work on your project together.