I have worked with scrap metal for ten years. This site exists because of a problem I kept running into in that time: the price you find online is almost never the price you are offered, and nobody explains the gap.
Three sides of the same trade
The ten years were not spent doing one thing, and the three roles explain why this site is shaped the way it is.
In the yards. Handling the material, watching it graded, seeing what gets deducted and why. This is where you learn that a load is not one price but several depending on what it is called, and that the difference between number 1 and number 2 copper is a soldered joint somebody could have cut off in thirty seconds. Everything on this site about grading, preparation and what to remove before you weigh in comes from that side.
As a trader. Buying and selling rather than only selling. That changes what you pay attention to, because the risk moves: pay a high-grade price for material that assays low and you eat the difference. It also teaches routing, which is the single most expensive thing most sellers get wrong. A diesel particulate filter is a steel canister to one buyer and a precious metals recovery job to another, and knowing which number to call is worth more than any negotiation.
As a data analyst. Prices are not opinions. The board on this site is built the way a working price model should be: an exchange settlement for the refined metal, a grade ratio, a currency conversion and a local market factor, each of which can be shown and argued with. The analytical side is also why the guides start with arithmetic rather than with a conclusion, and why several of them end up recommending against a purchase. If the numbers say a machine does not pay back at your volume, that is the answer regardless of what a vendor page says.
Those three are not separate careers. They are the same trade seen from the scale, from the phone and from the spreadsheet, and a page that only reflects one of them tends to be wrong in a predictable direction.
What ten years in scrap actually teaches you
Not price forecasting. Nobody in this trade can tell you where copper goes next, and anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
What it does teach you is where the money leaks out of a transaction, which is a much more useful thing to know and a much less glamorous thing to write about.
A load arrives at a yard and three things decide what you are paid: the grade it is called, the deductions applied, and whether you took it to a buyer who can price what is actually in it. The published price per pound is the least variable of the four. That is why most of what I write here is about grading, preparation and routing rather than about market direction.
Some specific things I have watched cost people money, repeatedly:
A converter thrown in with the exhaust. Priced by its stamped code it is worth $50 to $450 and sometimes more. Graded as steel it is worth the weight of the shell.
A working module opened to get at the board. An ECU is worth $200 to $1,500 to the reuse market and $3 to $8 a pound as scrap. Breaking the tamper seal converts one into the other and nothing reverses it.
One soldered joint in a clean pile. A mixed load is paid at the lowest grade present, so a single length of tinned wire regrades the drum it sits in.
An engine pulled before the car went in. Removing the drivetrain drops the whole vehicle from the complete-vehicle rate to the shred rate, and the transmission rarely covers that toll.
None of these are secrets in the trade. They are simply not written down anywhere a seller would find them, which is what this site is for.
What I write, and what I do not
I write about grading, preparation, routing and equipment, because those are the decisions a seller controls. Every guide on this site is built the same way: work out the arithmetic first, then write around it. If the arithmetic says do not buy the machine, that is what the guide says.
I do not forecast prices. The board on this site shows what the market is doing today, derived from exchange settlements. It is not a prediction and it is not an offer.
I do not accept payment for coverage. No yard, refiner or equipment maker has paid to appear here or to be described a particular way. Where I name a manufacturer or a service it is because it is relevant, not because of an arrangement.
I say when I do not know. Some of the questions people ask do not have a reliable public answer: what a specific yard will pay you tomorrow, what a converter code is worth to the exact dollar, whether a market will hold. Where that is the case the pages say so instead of filling the gap with a confident number.
Where the numbers come from
Prices are derived from exchange settlements for the refined metal, converted to each market's currency and unit, and adjusted by the share yards there typically pay for each grade. The methodology page sets out the mechanics and the editorial policy sets out the limits.
Yard listings come from official registers where governments publish them. The United Kingdom listings, for example, are built from the Environment Agency's public register of licensed scrap metal dealers, which is compiled by local authorities. Each listing carries its licence number, its source and the date it was last checked against the register.
Repair and equipment figures in the guides come from published trade pricing, manufacturer specifications and regulatory documents, cited in the text. Where a figure is a range rather than a number, it is written as a range.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, I want to know, and I would rather hear it from you than leave it up.
Yards can ask for a listing to be corrected or removed. Anyone can flag a figure that does not match what they are seeing in the market. The corrections policy sets out how that works and how long it takes.
Contact
Questions about the data, corrections to a listing, or anything else: the contact page is the route. I read everything sent through it.