Sorry if this has been asked already but what is the FMV on steel from my own scrap pile? It's often stuff that I have bought, one way or another, but if we are talking about the left over end of a piece of steel pipe or what not, can I budget it by the pound? And if so, what's the price per pound?
Also, if I do know for certain that I got it for free, it's 0$, right? How do I back that up?
I do scrap by the pound. My local steel yard lets me buy cut-offs and short pieces of steel for $0.75/lb, for which I have plenty of receipts saying the same unit price. Keep in mind that's a price for fresh, new steel. When I fabricate a part from steel, I prefer to weigh the piece after it's been rough cut, but before it's been trimmed down, since it's not realistic to recoup trimmings at the same price. Parts from tube or machine stock I will weigh or price the maximum rough cut length before trimming down. If you drill a bunch of speed holes in a tube, you didn't remove cost from that tube.
For example my gas tank I built from a 4x4 sheet of 20ga. It weighed 24 lbs, so that's $19.26 in the budget. The pattern for my gas tank took up most of that sheet, so much of it that it was unrealistic to make anything else from that sheet, so I counted the whole sheet in the budget.
Another example the aluminum bushings I machined from 1.5" alumimun bar stock. $16.99 for a 12" bar. When I was done machining, I had two bushings and 9" left of usable stock, so 9/12 * 16.99 = $4.25 for the pair of bushings.
If it's free and was available to anyone, have a printout or image of the advertisement, or a good story. If it was free but only available to you (buddy deal) then ask on here for a fair market value.
I thought there was an 'appliance and file cabinet' understanding that those are so easy to find for free that you can use the sheet metal from one for free. Look through the rules closely, it might still be in there.
Edit: I'm not seeing it on a quick search I may be imagining things again (hey where my pills?). But I really doubt anyone is going to protest that they don't think you scored a file cabinet for free or close to it from the side of the road.
Found a free 2ft x 2ft x 2ft hunk of aluminum and machined your own engine block however? better have good documentation. and you would be the awesomest.
Cool, thanks for the quick answers guys! I got probably, 200 lbs. of free steel via the 'buddy deal' but I'll use it at the $.75 a pound rule. Plans for finding super-cheap/ free appliances and file cabinets I will document.
the local ReStore by me is relocating, they had free cabinets last month (amongst other things) I loaded up.
Nobody has ever questioned my budget line items tagged as “found in trash”
If SCRAP was $.75/lb I’d be cashing in. I was very pleased with ~$.10/lb on the last car I squished.
My $.02. YMMV.
poopshovel again said:If SCRAP was $.75/lb I’d be cashing in. I was very pleased with ~$.10/lb on the last car I squished.
My $.02. YMMV.
Steel is literally at .02 here right now, and aluminum is .30. My buddy told me that, so i put about 1000 pounds of steel at the street last week so someone who really needs the $ could add to their load. The place we go to lets us pull from the pile as we dump. I got 2 new 3”x8’ .250 steel angles for .10/lb that way when steel was more valuable as scrap about 8 years ago. Basically trading scrap from my truck for scrap off the pile
I pay .80 for pieces off the cutoff rack at the fabrication shop, those aren’t scrap.
$10 dollars a hundred should be fair A& J Auto Salvage 1-352-795-JUNK
Just took a load of scrap in today for $130/gross ton, so basically $0.065/lb or 6.5 cents per pound.
90BuickCentury said:Just took a load of scrap in today for $130/gross ton, so basically $0.065/lb or 6.5 cents per pound.
If there are 50 cars in Challenge Junk weight price should be higher if we all scrap metal? I have seen it 3 dollars to 14 a hundred.
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