I've hauled many a load out of Blytheville. Always liked hauling beams out of there, sometimes 1 or 2 would be a full load.
"I am just curious what you do to be able to collect almost 8 tons of stainless steel scrap? " I got involved with buying medical and restaurant equipment from a university/hospital auction site every week.. The stuff that needs work goes dirt cheap, seems no one wanted to buy used medical equipment that don't work properly so I would buy it at an online auction during the week and then go pick it all up on Friday. I picked it up on Friday because they also had a store open that day with other things that they didn't list auction style online.. Stuff they didn't sell they would reduce every week and I usually brought a few things from there every week too. You just never know from week to week what they will have. incubators, deep freeze lab freezers, centrifuges, operating tables, countertops, buffet tables, you just never know what they have. being hospital stuff, it is good grade stuff and supersized too. like the air conditioner I brought not long ago weighed 1400 pounds and I was the only bidder on it for $75. Like I said stuff that doesn't work right goes cheap but also what helps is a lot of it has condensers in them so the small scrap guys won't touch it but I have the equipment to reclaim it so I can bid/buy some of the items that they won't touch.
The university/hospital auction site was my best source for getting a lot of ss but I also got some from other sources too. I got known by the local restaurant and taverns as being the local scrapper for big items so they always called me when they needed a cooler, ice machine, freezer, washers, etc. removed. Being bars and restaurants to satisfy the health inspectors quite a bit of that stuff is ss. Best part this was totally free just for picking the stuff up but you still had to cut t into sheets to get the good price but the plasma made that easy to do. Also I had a little home machine shop just down the road from me that drilled holes in computer and electrical typed boxes that was mainly ss. You wouldn't think cut outs would add up but I got like 100-200 pounds every other week from him. He also just gave me everything for free for hauling it away.. That was a good gig for many years until the guy had a stroke and had to shut his side business down.
I'm wondering if the tariffs are also affecting the construction industry. We estimated a project at $2M in St. Louis that's got a lot of HVAC in it last summer (duct work/sheet metal, for instance) and the owner jumped my chili on Friday asking why the bids they just got were $3.7M. Other than only two bidders using the same subcontractors, shortage of skilled labor, hyper-inflated construction activity in the area (not to mention flood damage repair work), me thinks taking advantage of the tariffs to increase prices for domestic-made products is a major factor.
It’s going to affect any industry that’s been inundated with cheap import products Construction will be hit hard with fasteners, fabricated assemblies, and raw materials like studs and pipe , wire, rebar temp fence blah blah blah. Been forever since I’ve actually held any new USA made bolts
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