A Guide to Scrapping Appliances

Getting into the metal scrapping industry can be lucrative; the more scrap metal you can salvage at one time, the more money you can make since metal is purchased by weight.

While many people make side money scrapping vehicles, you can salvage metal from broken or dated appliances to make a decent profit. The key lies in knowing what appliances are worth seeking, how to get the most metal out of your collection, and where you can find new inventory to dissect for scrap.

Use this guide to make you more skilled at scrapping appliances. Research scrapyards in your area to see which ones will offer you scrap pickup services or a container to store your metal in so you can manage your scrapping materials better and make money more efficiently.

1. Appliances Worth Scrapping

When seeking appliances for scrap metal purposes, look for larger pieces of equipment, such as dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and old stoves. These pieces of equipment are easier to take apart and sort your metal panels out of, which gives you more metal to scrap with less effort.

Appliances are commonly made of lightweight yet durable metal like aluminum or thin sheets of steel; separate your metals before loading them for the scrapyard since every metal carries its own value. Aluminum, being nonferrous in design, is more valuable per pound than ferrous metals are.

Refrigerators and any appliances that use plumbing to operate - like an old rusted water heater - are especially worthy of collecting for scrap. This is because these appliances often have copper components; copper wire and plumbing scrap is valuable and gives you great profit. Check all appliances for a copper coil during the dismantling process to make extra money.

2. Appliances Not Worth Scrapping

While you can scrap basically any appliance that is made of metal, sometimes the scrap removal and separation process is not worth as much of your time and effort as others. For example, dismantling a microwave or garbage disposal unit may yield some metal scrap but take hours to do.

Avoid collecting appliances that have a high volume of plastic or other human-made components that aren't metal, such as mixers, microwaves, toasters, toaster ovens, and other smaller appliances. Unless these pieces of equipment contain metal coils or tubing - like a window air conditioning unit might -stick to collecting larger units.

If you have smaller appliances ready for scrap, consider leaving these units intact and take a smaller profit. If you're willing to put the time into separating metals, you can double your earnings, but put your opportunity cost into consideration before moving forward.

3. Appliances: Where to Find Them

Luckily, the older an appliance is, the more copper the unit usually has. This means greater profits for you since most unwanted appliances are older.

Another plus is that old appliances often require special payment to garbage pickup services for removal, which means people either have to haul their unwanted units away themselves or pay someone to remove them.

This is where you come in: by advertising your free appliance removal service in your local area, you can quickly acquire a large amount of valuable scrap metal without paying for the equipment.

You may even see free broken appliances listed in the local paper or in online forums; scour your outlets daily to gather more appliances for your collection.

Once you have enough scrap to make a decent profit, let our team at Bruce Metal & Salvage turn your metal into money. We have industrial containers for our serious scrapping customers to use; call us or visit our scrapyard today.