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Gold from Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap Part 3
Thursday, August 14, 2009
Gold from Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap Part 3
RecyclingSecrets.com
by Michael Meuser
This is the 3rd in an ongoing series of articles about my experience in the electronic salvage, recycling and gold recovery business. At first, I was going to write this up as an ebook and sell it, but I decided - given the tough economic times we all face - to give it away in installments. New installments, resources, how-to articles and news can be found at www.RecyclingSecrets.com.
In the last post I talked about looking at the material and bringing back some samples so I could begin to develop a market for the salvage - note that selling for reuse almost always brings in more revenue than recycling for the metal value.
In this post I'll talk a bit about getting equipment and marketing.
Once I saw the material, I knew that I needed a real truck. I had brought back quite a few large batteries. Each 2 volt cell weighed approximately 500 pounds and was about a foot square and 2 feet tall. I lived in a rural area where a lot of folks ran alternative energy systems so I put an ad in the local free advertising paper looking to sell the batteries or trade for a large flatbed truck.
I got a response almost immediately. A fellow had a nice old GMC 5 ton flatbed. It didn't run well, but he was willing to trade it for a set of batteries. Recall that I bid so low on the batteries that I hoped that i wouldn't get them - well, I'm sure glad I did - they turned out to be a "goldmine." It took about $200 to get the truck running well and I thought, "now I'm in business."
I thought I could rent a forklift in Nevada and along with the truck, haul all the stuff back to California. NOT! Turned out the only forklift was a giant weighing 14,000 pounds and was 150 miles away. It took me 5 hours to haul it all the way to the station and 7 hours to get it back once I was loaded. Not good.
So... my next task was to get a forklift. That first load with the a5 ton truck was almost entirely batteries - 10 sets in all. I found an alternative energy dealer who would buy them for $500 per set so I made the deal and headed to a forklift dealer with cash in hand. I bought a very nice forklift that weighed about 5,000 pounds trailer and all. Good thing to was that it was guaranteed for a year and had a 75% buy back policy. My cost was $4,000.
Now I had a forklift and a market for at least some of the batteries - I had about 200 sets altogether.
I still didn't really have a market for much of the rest of the equipment. There was copper cable and wire of all sizes and some hundreds of feet in length, large radio bays made of extruded aluminum, racks, racks, and more racks, generators, alternators, rectifiers and a lot of gold plated connectors and attenuators.
I stripped down several of the radio bays, taking out all the gold bearing stuff and headed to the bay area. I was dissapointed with the price for "unclean" aluminum, but one dealer told me that an overseas buyer might be interested. Within days I had several dealers calling me and wanting to see the material. It turned out that I was offered $10,000 per load of racks, one load per station. I hesitated and it paid off. I told him I'd have to think about it and get other bids. He asked what it would take to decide right now and I said "$10,000 up front in addition to the $10,000 for each station would do it." He bit and I walked away with $10,000 cash.
By now I realized that I could not haul enough fast enough even with my 5 ton truck so I ran another ad looking for a semi to lease with or without driver (I had a commercial license so I could drive it if need be) and yard space. Within a week I had found a fellow with 40 foot flatbed rigs, himself and son as drivers and a 5 acre yard that I could use fully if I'd give him the job to haul everything from the stations. He charged me $500 per load flat and it took 2 loads per station. I didn't even have to be there to unload. He kept all the overseas material separate and was paid by the overseas buyer to load it into shipping containers. The rest was arranged in neat rows and stacks waiting for me.
I should back up a bit. The 5 ton truck turned out to be very useful. It was my work truck. With it I could pull the forklift and move things around and load up my drivers plus I could use it to distribute the large ex-agricultural bins I purchased as containers for the smaller salvaged items.
Of course, I kept all the gold bearing stuff and didn't ship it.
More to come. New articles will be listed at www.RecyclingSecrets.com (news, tools, and resources are also available here) and also at www.recyclingsecrets.blogspot.com.
About the Author
I got into the recycling and salvage business in the early 80s. The housing boom and recession at that time and loss of a job made me look for a new way to support my family. I found a small pamphlet titled, surplus and salvage and began applying the principles that I found within. My salvage work ranged from autos and trucks, building materials, metals to electronics and gold. A year ago or so I began to write an ebook about the electronic salvage and gold recovery experience. I was going to sell the book, but writing an entire book proved daunting so I've started to write it in short articles that I give away free. I know that these are hard times and I don't want to burden you with any more expense. I hope that my experience will prove to be encouraging and useful to you.
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