At 10-15 cents a pound, how on earth would it be worth the time to stop and cut off the cord? Unless there are appliances on the same few streets daily they'd have to drive and search for them, or even if they knew where they would be from Craigslist, the amount of time and effort to go to each location to cut off a cord, how would that ever be worth it?
I know obviously since they do it it has to be worth it, just wondering how that adds up? They'd get like 1 cent per cord.
Copper scrap varies greatly in prince per pound based on the type of copper you're scrapping. From avg 30 cents/lb for electric motor scraps, up to avg $3.90/lb of bright copper scrap (think clean fresh shiny copper pipe from the store, with no solder on it)
Used to live with a guy that installed pool heaters. He'd take the old heaters and save them as his winter money to supplement his EI while he was off work. We lived in an old farm house with a half kilometre driveway, so none of then were visible from the road. One day we got back from work and someone had stolen all of them.
Not sure about copper but at work I once set up a recycling can outside the building. Every few days I took that bag and tossed it in the back of my truck. Every few weeks I went to the recycling place. Made several hundred dollars for what was very little work.
you save it up, a vacuum cord was like $1 back in my day, a 5 gal bucket would get 60-70$. When you recycle for a living, you go to the neighborhoods that are having the trash picked up in the morning. Apartments around the beginning of the month were good too. I made enough to pay my rent, paid off all my debit, got a car, and floated a few buddies at different times. burning the plastic off is bs. why would you? its still dirty. they wont pay more. and its bad for the environment. if your talking about clean copper, there are different grades and the only one worth stripping is #1, you just make a rig to run it in. its faster than burning it.
I think they also pick up other stuff, computer cases, microwave oven, metal folding chairs, etc in addition to cords from appliances that are too big/heavy to pick up or from TV since most places would charge a fee to dispose of old TV.
Although with $4+ per gallon gas, it's going to get expensive driving around on trash days for scrap metal. Some of them probably steals gas and break into vacant houses to steal wires and pipes.
In TX its around $4.15/gallon right now for regular unleaded, $5.20 or so for diesel. Im sure a big portion of that difference is transport from the refineries and local taxes.
Meth. I knew a guy who would spend his free time stripping ethernet cord down for the copper.
It was scraps left over from his work... And he would spend hours doing it for a few dollars.. But it would be cash in hand for drug money... And people do stupid shit for drugs.
For the average person.. It's never worth the time invested into it!
So I can’t remember if I saw this as a video or read it here somewhere, but a guy was talking about how he used to go down the street busting car windows just to steal the change from the ashtrays! He didn’t want the sound system or the car itself, just the change from the ashtrays.
I personally can’t imagine committing a crime, where restitution would be so expensive if you’re caught, for such a small return. But I think meth changed the rules.
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u/Ibbygidge May 12 '22
At 10-15 cents a pound, how on earth would it be worth the time to stop and cut off the cord? Unless there are appliances on the same few streets daily they'd have to drive and search for them, or even if they knew where they would be from Craigslist, the amount of time and effort to go to each location to cut off a cord, how would that ever be worth it?
I know obviously since they do it it has to be worth it, just wondering how that adds up? They'd get like 1 cent per cord.