bottom drops out of scrap market

looks like my formatting is all shot to bits :o(

I also meant to include in the original posting that the yard was formerly getting price updates once a week - the market was pretty stable and prices only went up and down a few quid. Now they are getting up to 3 updates a day.

Personally I'm delighted because although I have a load of aluminium cylinder heads I wish I'd scrapped sooner I can now expect a peaceful life instead of bleeding pikeys knocking on my door every week asking me if I want to scrap the Sierra on my drive. At its worst a few months back I had three in one week including two different ones in one day, one of whom had the nerve to tell me if I didn't want to sell it I ought to put a notice to that effect on it.

Why TF should I have to put up a notice saying I DON'T want to sell something rather than a notice saying I do want to sell it if and when I so decided to just to keep these bloody vultures away?

Anyway they've no doubt all crawled back under their respective rocks now. Good riddance.

Unfortunately what you have missed here is that they will be looking to other traditional methods of raising their cash. They may not be bothering you about the Sierra as they are likely to be too busy liberating your other car(s) assuming they can fit it into their hectic schedule of nocturnal house garage and workshop 'inspections'. It also means that whatever they pick up from people when they are doing a bit of garden clearance work, in their capacity as landscape gardeners, will just be dumped in the nearest ditch or country lane.

I fear you might be right and in fact that very thought crossed my mind the weekend before last as I went out to find my Focus had been broken into during the night and left full of water, mud and broken glass but with less in the way of radio/cd than it used to have. According to the local paper it's reached epidemic proportions round here with one poor sod they interviewed saying his car had been broken into five times in a few months. It's not worth fixing anything because it's just an invitation for them to break in again.

On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:15:51 +0100, Dudley Simons finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouths, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::

It might stop the theft of lead and copper from houses and churches though.......................

Brian L Dominic

Web Site:

Newsgroup readers should note that the reply-to address is NOT read: To email me, please send to brian(dot)dominic(at)tiscali(dot)co(dot)uk

actually

Oh Dear, there was me thinking I've dug up a fortune! levelling the ground for pair of green houses for the wife in the shadow of an 'H Pole' with EDF transformer on top, we dug up the stubs of a previous pair of poles AND the earth plate (no definately nothing to do with the existing pole ). This plate is solid copper two foot square and at least 3/8 thick

AWEM

SWMBO heard something outside about a month ago and found a couple of didicoy loading a couple of 3m long 150mm square steel sections that I'd got on the drive on to their wagon. They hadn't bothered to ask...

She made them put the steel back where it had been. I'd have called the police:-(

Mark Rand RTFM

Mark, she did the right thing.If she`d called the police they would have been off with your steel while the bobbies were noting down your life history. My experience with pikeys and police is that it`s too much trouble for the police as these guys are never going to court. Mark.

We lose a lot of pieces of industrial heritage when the scrap prices are high, so the good side of a fall is that more interesting machines will survive into preservation.

Also, as someone mentioned, it will be less tempting for people to steal metal for scrap.

Best wishes,

Chris

I doubt it :o( It really depends how much further the price of copper and lead goes down. Copper and lead are still worth taking to the scrappy for the dids, especially if they have managed to aquire a couple of hundred kilos for relatively little effort.

If you look at the teletext travel pages, every morning you will see several rail routes with "signalling problems". Nothing to do with faulty workmanship but everything to do with overnight cable thefts from the lineside. Can't they just put 1000v through one of the spare wires?

George

A drain cover - heavy cast iron grid, two man lift - has vanished overnight from round the corner. ...............

regards,

Kim Siddorn

If you look at the teletext travel pages, every morning you will see several rail routes with "signalling problems". Nothing to do with faulty workmanship but everything to do with overnight cable thefts from the lineside. Can't they just put 1000v through one of the spare wires?

George

They have been known to nick 11kV overhead power lines. The less bright attempt this without first shorting the line to earth.

Bet they become bright when they try to do it ;-)

At least phone lines, church roofs, and manhole covers may have a better chance of surviving the tea-leafs now.

BugBear

Hi All

I took about 300kg of what is locally referred to as light iron in this morning - covers just about anything that has meetal on it - office chairs, printers, keyboards, filing cabinets, cars etc. The load I took in was the stuff that is left over having stripped all the easily accessable non ferrous material and as such is little more than rubbish to me.

I didn't expect to get much for it a couple of quid for the diesel was all I hoped for. There was a notice up in the office window informing customers that ferrous scrap would no longer be paid for - ie they will take it but won't be paying for it.

Non ferrous prices this morning (they were still using Friday afternoons prices - hadn't received the Monday morning list)

Copper 1250 Brass 480 Ali 100 S/S 300 Lead 200

They reckoned that every load leaving the yard to go to their recycling facility was still losing them money.

I suspect that things are going to get worse. Get ready to see the reappearance of dead cars in laybys etc :o(

Dudley

Dudley Sim> Morning All

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Baker" saying something like:

Perhaps you should put a notice on it saying the door is unlocked.