Scrap Guide

If you've got a pile of pipe in the garage, a bin of wire from a job site, or a dead appliance you'd rather see paid for than hauled, this is the hub for you. The scrap trade isn't complicated, but the small decisions — what's actually scrap, which grade your load falls into, what a fair payout looks like — are where first-time sellers leave money on the table. Everything in this silo is written for the person standing at the scale, not for an industry analyst reading commodities reports.

This page orients the four categories below: basics, grades, equipment, and yards. Each one answers a different stage of the question "is this load worth driving in, and what should I expect when I do?" — and the deeper leaves under each go grade-by-grade and yard-by-yard. If you're brand new, start with Scrap Basics and the scrap for metal beginner's walkthrough. If you've sold before and want to lift your per-pound number, jump to Scrap Grades.

What "scrap" actually means

Scrap is metal that's reached the end of its first life and is heading back into the supply chain — appliances, pipe, wire, sheet, automotive parts, demo debris, manufacturing offcuts. The defining feature isn't condition; it's that a yard will weigh it, grade it, and pay you cash or a check against a posted per-pound price. A bent copper pipe and a clean copper bus bar are both scrap, but they don't pay the same.

The industry sorts everything into three buckets and you should too. Ferrous metals (iron, steel, cast iron) contain iron, stick to a magnet, and pay in the cents-per-pound range — high volume, low margin. Non-ferrous metals (copper, aluminum, brass, lead, zinc, nickel) don't stick to a magnet and pay in the dollars-per-pound range — this is where most of your money comes from. Then there's the awkward middle: stainless steel, which is mostly non-magnetic but iron-based, and mixed-metal assemblies (motors, transformers, sealed units) that contain valuable copper trapped inside steel housings.

That distinction matters at the scale because yards quote separate prices for each bucket, and a mixed bin gets graded down to whatever's lowest in it. The magnet test is the fastest sort you can do at home — see the basics on identifying scrap metal for the practical version. For live per-pound numbers across the major non-ferrous metals, the copper price pillar and aluminum price pillar have current spot plus the scrap-discounted yard payout.

How yards organize the trade

Every US scrap yard you'll walk into runs on roughly the same playbook. Once you understand the moving parts, every yard looks familiar:

• Grades are the shorthand on the price board. Copper alone has six or seven tiers (bare bright, #1, #2, light copper, ICW, low-grade) and the per-pound difference between adjacent tiers is real money — sometimes 2× across two grades.
• The scale is either a floor scale (small loads, weighed by bin) or a truck scale (whole-vehicle gross/tare). Reputable yards welcome scale questions; ask which scale is being used and confirm the tare if it's a truck weigh.
• The magnet test is the grader's first move. A magnet stuck to your "stainless" sink means it's a low-grade ferrous magnetic stainless or it's plated steel — and the price drops accordingly. The magnet doesn't catch 304/316 stainless, which is why graders also use a spark test or XRF gun on the questionable pieces.
• The payout chain is yard → processor → mill → product manufacturer. Every step takes a margin. The yard's posted price is already net of its cut; what gets called "spot" on financial-news sites is what the mill pays the processor, not what you'll see at the window.
• ID and reporting are the law, not the yard being nosy. Most US states require photo ID and (in many cases) a check rather than cash above a low threshold — often $25–$100 — to deter metal theft. Bring your license; it saves a trip back.
• Posted price is the ceiling. Tarnish, paint, solder, attached fittings, or moisture all knock you down a tier on inspection. The grader is paid to be skeptical; sort cleanly at home and you stop arguing at the window.

The four scrap-guide categories

Each of the four categories below answers a different layer of the trade. Pick by where you are right now:

Start in basics if it's your first load — the beginner's walkthrough on scrap for metal covers what's worth picking up at all and what to leave alone. The basics layer is short on purpose; once you've read it, the bigger lifts come from the next two.

Grades is the highest-leverage category to learn, full stop. Copper alone can swing from $5/lb (bare bright) down to $1/lb (insulated thin-gauge) on the same metal, sorted differently. The copper and wire grading guide walks through the ladder and the math on when stripping insulation pays for itself versus when your time is better spent sorting more.

Equipment and yards round out the picture. Equipment is small ROI math — a $40 wire stripper pays for itself in roughly 15 lb of stripped Romex, a magnet pays for itself in one mis-sort avoided. Yards is the people side: how to read a price board, what "delivered" vs "picked up" means, and the current scrap metal prices reference we keep updated against the live spot.

What makes a good scrap day

The difference between a $200 trip and a $120 trip on the same bin of metal is almost always preparation. The habits that separate experienced scrappers from one-off sellers are unglamorous but they compound:

• Pre-sort by grade before you drive. Bare bright in one bucket, #1 in another, #2 in a third, ICW separate, ferrous in the truck bed. A mixed barrel defaults to the lowest grade present — that's a 20–40% haircut you eat for the convenience of not sorting.
• Strip insulation only when the math works. Reclassifying ICW (40–55% of spot) to bare bright (88–92%) roughly doubles the recoverable per-pound — but only on thick-gauge wire where the recovery rate is high. Thin lamp cord is a time-loser.
• Call ahead for a price quote, especially on big loads. Yard prices move daily; for anything over a few hundred pounds, two phone calls can be a $30–$80 swing. The scrap metal prices today reference gives you a baseline to test what you're being told.
• Bring photo ID and expect a check over the cash threshold. Most yards cap cash payouts; a check or ACH for the remainder is normal, not a red flag.
• Watch for moisture and contamination deductions. A wet load loses a few percent. A bin with grease, plastic, or unidentified attachments loses more. Drain, dry, and de-gunk before the truck bed.
• Don't argue with the grader. Sort cleanly so there's nothing to argue about. If you disagree with a tier call, ask politely why — graders will explain, and you'll know more for next time.
• Track what you got paid per grade. Two yards in the same metro can pay 5–10% differently for the same #1 copper. Three months of notes tells you which one to drive to.

Where this hub fits in the wider site

The scrap guide is the sellers' map. For real-time pricing on what your load is worth, the pricing pillars carry live spot plus the typical scrap-discount math: copper price, aluminum price, brass price, and stainless steel price cover the four metals most scrappers actually move. If you're holding old jewelry, sterling, or bullion instead, the gold price and silver price pillars handle the troy-ounce math (precious metals are quoted per troy ounce, not per pound — it's a different conversation).

The sibling guide silos pick up where this one stops. The recycling guide is the wider story — what happens to your scrap after the yard, plus auto, e-waste, and construction streams that don't always run through a traditional scrap yard. The selling guide covers the transactional side: prep, pricing literacy, logistics, and getting paid right. The local guide is where you find a yard in your metro. And the industry guide is the macro view — buyers, vendors, trade flows — useful when you're scaling beyond a side hustle. For ISRI's industry-side perspective, the trade association at ISRI publishes the spec sheets that yards use to define grade boundaries.

Frequently asked questions