Scrap metal recycling is a huge industry, and automotive recycling feeds tons of scrap steel into scrap metal yards every year. Materials that are considered scrap metal often are not thrown away; instead scrap metal yards process the incoming materials, sell some back to customers and then sell the bulk materials to recyclers to reuse. 

Scrap Metal

Just about any metal can be considered scrap metal, but the bulk of scrap metal that goes through scrap metal yards is steel, aluminum, copper, brass, and alloys like stainless steel. When the material arrives in the yard, the scrap metal is sorted by material type so that the scrap metal yard can sell it to the buyer at a higher price. 

Any scrap metal that is contaminated with foreign material will need to be sorted again by the buyer, and because of that, they will not pay as much for the metal. When sellers bring scrap to the yard to sell it, they often run into the same situation. If the metal is sorted correctly and is clean, it is accepted at a higher price by the scrap metal yard. 

Automotive salvage yards often bring metal to the scrap metal yard in the form of car bodies. Those cars must be stripped of everything that is not metal or that could contaminate the metal before the scrap metal yard will accept it. 

Sorting Scrap Metal

When someone brings scrap metal to the yard to sell, the scrap metal yard's buyer will look over the load and determine if the metal is valuable to them or not. The price the scrap metal yard is willing to pay for the metal largely depends on the scrap metal market at that time. 

Some large scrap metal yards will store large quantities of metal until the price is high enough to make a good profit, but operations that do not have the space to pile up a lot of material will often only buy material when they can sell it quickly. This means being selective and buying specific materials from sorted loads to help maximize the sorted material in the yard and drive up the value when they sell the metal to the recycler.

Retail Sales

Sorting the metals that are coming in can also help to produce some retail sales for the scrap metal yard. Large pieces of steel or aluminum might be something the yard can sell to a customer for a project they are working on. The customer may come to the scrap yard knowing that they can get a deal on a large chunk of steel or other metal, so when the yard takes in these materials, they try to separate them from the recyclable scrap and save them to resell.

Contact a company like TNT Auto Salvage to learn more.