I wanted an truck and wanted a diesel. So, there wasn't any question what to get.

Now that I've had my cummins for about six months now, I feel like it's getting bored, all it does is carpool with 5 people to work and haul trivial weight every once in a while.

I would like some suggestions on how make some side money hauling loads with the cummins.

My rig is in the sig.

 

Get one of these and give it the workout it want's.

 

I'd love to JBurn, but that would make the balance in my bank account go the wrong way!!!

 

What I did with mine.....and paid for the truck with my earnings, fuel for the truck, all my gauges and lots of other stuff was to haul scrap metal from car dealerships. I just stopped by and talked to the service manager or shop foreman, told them what I was doing and asked if they had someone that picked up there stuff exclusively or if it was first come first serve. Most said they had nobody in particular and some even said they had stuff they needed to get rid of and nobody to call....so I gave them my phone number.

Here is my personal breakdown, automotive body shop scrap is ok....it's bulky, takes up a lot of space on a trailer, tricky to haul without scrap falling off. It weighs nothing (i.e, fenders,hoods etc) and you can stack it as High and wide as your trailer will allow. You go across the scales and find you have around 2800 pounds. The most I was ever able to get on my 16' trailer was around 3000 and that was standing the hoods up all the way around and piling it in the middle as high as the hoods. Plus you need a place to pile it up so you can get 3000#'s.

Automotive brake rotors/drums, exhaust manifolds, engine blocks and things like that. Just AWESOME in my opinion. I hauled in somewhere around 9000#'s of brake rotors and drums and walked out with a truck payment plus. The load lays low in your trailer, don't look like much but weighs A LOT!!

Aluminum, copper,brass, radiators and condensors....all very good. Transmissions, engine blocks from your high end dealers(Lexus,Infiniti, Cadillac) all aluminum blocks, heads and pay .55 cent/pound. I disassemble the engines,transmissions to get top dollar. If you don't it is considered heavy irony aluminum and will bring .10 cents/pound. Transmissions with the oil pan attached are/were .07 cents/pound and .10 cents per pound with oil pan removed. I could get a tranny apart in about 45 minutes, so with nothing else to do it was worth my time.

Automotive components, throttle bodies, alternators, window motors,sunroof motors, a/c compressors, mass airflow sensors, catalytic converters can be sold into aftermarket for rebuildable cores. I knew a guy that would buy all that stuff and give good money for it.

I had to get out of it, my new job has thrown a wrench in me being able to get to all the dealers on a regular basis to beat the other "scrap guys" to the goods. So now if I go up on a Saturday to hit the dealers I pretty much loose money by burning fuel to go get nothing. I always thought about dropping a trailer for them to throw the metal in and try and get exclusive rights and maybe slip them some of the cash from the metal so I could be exclusive, but it never panned out and they did not seem concerned or want to be bothered with it. Now that I'm back into heavy equipment though, I am trying to convince my boss to let me take home our scrap metal....I keep looking at the hydraulic hammer bits that lay at the end of the yard and think about how much each one of those things weigh!!

 

dodgeguy71,

wow, great write up. I appreciate the time. Unfortunately, weekends are all I have.

There may not be anything out there. I'll look into the scrap though.

 

I get into the scrap metal gig myself. Not as lucrative as that, but I keep my eye out for things here and there. Just running down a street on a trash pick-up day you would be amazed at what you find, old electric cords (copper) old brass lamps, all sorts of good stuff. You would be amazed at how much you can build up in short time.

 

Yeah... I have a brother in law that goes to farms and picks up old iron and steal... He runs across copper and brass alot of times too... He makes his truck and car payment and pays for fuel Plus plus plus... You would be amazed at how much farmer end up with... they usually say get rid of it all and you will end up hauling out of there for a week! You definitely need a trailer, torch, magnet and a fire extinguisher for that type of deal... Also... Old mobile homes... Gut them of copper, aluminum, glass and brass... burn the wood and cut up the frame and axles (if they are still there).... Some of those things are worth a lot more as scrap than as a trailer house plus a lot of time they will just give them to you because they can't sell them...
Next is scrap cars!!! dodgeguy71 explained alot of that... but there are tons of cars just laying around the country side dead... They will give them to you just to not have to look at it any more... Part them out and scavenge and seperate out what you can and it will bring a lot more money... plus if you know if there are some good parts you can ebay them. Or sell to people that buy cores.
Good luck...

 

you could scrap the dodge! thatd bring in a hefty chunk of change! Hehe!

 

Looks like scrap metal is the only way to go...

And YOU SIR, kawiram! That is the most heinous suggestion I've ever heard! Scraping the Ram would be like cutting off my left ********.

 

If you have a trailer with a winch on it you can pick up repos for car dealers. The smaller car dealers that finance their own cars often have cars that have already been repoed. But they are kinda far away. And they need them picked up from repo companies. You need a little equipment like a car trailer with ramps and I suggest a winck installed on it. because many times these cars won't run or move on their own. And you need some strap or chains to hold them down. You have to negotiate a deal with the dealer. But you can make some pretty easy money this way. You can also do voluntary repos this way.

 

As I work for farmers and am one myself, I can't get rid of anything unless I get paid for it. There's no way I'd let anyone else haul off scrap metals. There's not a farm around here, whose kids aren't out picking up aluminum cans and horseshoes every chance they get.

 

Here is Texas it can be done... Especially if you offer to pay a little for it. My brother in law has been hauling out of 1 farm for nearly 3 weeks working mainly on the weekend... so far 5 cars/truck... lot of old broken equipment... air conditioners freezers barbwire tee posts etc... The farmer is just glad to be able to get around the field again... they know he is getting money for it but they don't care... They are just happy to see the ground again
He has gotten calls from others that want him to clean their place also... so it definitely can be done..
OG

 

The farmers in Wyoming are smart to the antique markets. They've got a steady supply of good stuff going to auction, when times get tough.

 

Yeah, I left out the junk car part. I have hauled off two or three. I would gut them as was said. Alternator, starter.....if easily accessible, tire tools, mass airflow sensors, converters, if I was feeling spunky I would pull the trans, but most of the time the money you would get out of the aluminum for the time invested was not worth it. If you had a good running motor with decent miles you could pull it and sell it as a used motor, but that would be long term because you never know if someone will be hunting that particular engine. You have to know your cars do do that so you know what engines are worth keeping around, i.e anything 350 chevrolet.

Downfall to hauling cars, tires. If you could break the tires down you could haul off the steel wheels for scap, be it aluminum or steel. The tires you'll have to pay to dispose of. This is the type of thing that could be done on weekends, place an add in your local paper, something like "old cars removed for free, some will buy" or something like that. It's easier if people see that the pile of junk that has been cluttering up the yard may still bring something, even if it's 30-40 bucks. I did not do bad on the cars I hauled off. I made around 150 for each car and then money from the catalytic converters, alternator, starter, MAF sensors. If you feel really spunky you can try and gut the dash wire harness and engine harness for the copper. Dash boards are pretty easy when they going to the bone yard, just use a BIG hammer. I think I got somewhere around $5.50 per 100 pounds on scrap cars/trucks.

Farms, yeah a gold mine in scrap metal. Finding a farmer who is willing to give up his hoard of scrap for free? Well, not impossible, but you have to remember these guys usually fix everything they have on their own, make most everything they have...pretty much self sustained, so they have an idea on the value of a pile of scrap. One farm I hauled off from he just wanted a little bit of the money. I think I made $150 off one load and I gave him $40, he was happy. I also thought about getting with these auction houses that sell off farms and seeing if hauling off the piles of scrap was possible, again, never did look into that.

Oh yeah, one more thing. If you haul in copper wire with the shielding on it I believe it is considered to be "dirty" and brings less money. Burning the wire to melt the shielding off is useless, cause I believe they still class it as dirty copper, plus it is environmentally unsound and may be illegal. So the only alternative is stripping the wire, I heard somewhere that there was something for this but I can't be sure. The clean copper is the big money maker though.

 

Scrapping metal for a living is a tough row to hoe!

I'd rather be a rancher/farmer... oh wait - been there, done that

We throw out our leftover steel and iron from the shop, since the little bits don't weigh enough to pay for the diesel to haul them, much less the time.
However, the stainless steel, aluminum, brass, lead, bronze, magnesium, copper, inconel, titanium, etc. is saved and periodically hauled to the scrapyard. I let one of the boys disassemble the parts to seperate the alloys out - they love those destructive activities!

I don't mess with it, because my time is too valuable - I'd have to part out a car into it's base metals in a couple of hours to make it worthwhile.