For a young up and comer like myself, salvaging/recycling scrap metal is a really great way to make money, work outside and be your own boss. I've done this job since I was probably 12 - 14 and it beats the hell out of standing around some shitty summer job and making minimum wage.
I'll break it down for you:
Where I live there's a lot of farms/industrial construction work/huge redneck trash houses. All these places are always loaded down with things like broken down old farm equipment, construction debris like re-bar and left over metal and old empty beer cans/broken down lawn mowers etc... (I don't do anything too heavy, or that can't be cut up. Since I'm just one dude).
These places are everywhere around me and a quick 15 minute drive is all that's needed to scope them out (I only do the ones with a lot of metal debris).
I stop by these places and offer to clean up the area for a small fee (and to be in charge of disposing of the metal). These people never think about the metal and whatnot, but they're really happy to have the place cleaned up (side note: all the motherfuckers are cheap asses, so you won't make money on cleaning up their shitty yards).
After like an hour or two of hard work rounding up all their shit, I throw it on my trailer and haul it off to the scrap metal recycling center (there's one 30 minutes from my house), where I get paid (in cash) again just for bringing the materials in.
Now, your probably thinking "what's that pay? Like 20 bucks. This sounds lame," but I assure you that this business is very lucrative. It's not too uncommon for me to make a couple hundred in a day, in fact I once made $600 over the course of a weekend (from cleaning up a ton of beer cans and barbed wire). Also there is next to no investment cost to get into this business and it's something that a lot of dudes could easily do on the weekends.
I'll break it down for you:
Where I live there's a lot of farms/industrial construction work/huge redneck trash houses. All these places are always loaded down with things like broken down old farm equipment, construction debris like re-bar and left over metal and old empty beer cans/broken down lawn mowers etc... (I don't do anything too heavy, or that can't be cut up. Since I'm just one dude).
These places are everywhere around me and a quick 15 minute drive is all that's needed to scope them out (I only do the ones with a lot of metal debris).
I stop by these places and offer to clean up the area for a small fee (and to be in charge of disposing of the metal). These people never think about the metal and whatnot, but they're really happy to have the place cleaned up (side note: all the motherfuckers are cheap asses, so you won't make money on cleaning up their shitty yards).
After like an hour or two of hard work rounding up all their shit, I throw it on my trailer and haul it off to the scrap metal recycling center (there's one 30 minutes from my house), where I get paid (in cash) again just for bringing the materials in.
Now, your probably thinking "what's that pay? Like 20 bucks. This sounds lame," but I assure you that this business is very lucrative. It's not too uncommon for me to make a couple hundred in a day, in fact I once made $600 over the course of a weekend (from cleaning up a ton of beer cans and barbed wire). Also there is next to no investment cost to get into this business and it's something that a lot of dudes could easily do on the weekends.