Scrap Metal Removal in Chicopee, MA

Scrap metal is the exception in this business. Everything else in a truck costs money to dispose of. Metal earns some back, and that changes the price you are quoted.

Massachusetts has banned ferrous and non ferrous metals from disposal since 1 July 2006 under 310 CMR 19.017, so it cannot go in a landfill anyway. It has to be separated and sent to a scrap yard. Because the yard pays for it, a load that is mostly metal is priced lower than the same volume of household junk, and a large clean load of steel is occasionally collected for nothing.

Do not expect to be paid, though. A homeowner quantity of scrap is worth a modest amount at the yard, and it rarely covers the truck, the two people and the trip. The honest position is that metal reduces your bill rather than reversing it.

What counts as scrap

Steel is the bulk of it: appliance shells, filing cabinets, bed frames, swing sets, shelving, cast iron radiators and tubs, exercise plates, lawn mower decks. Non ferrous is the valuable part: copper pipe and wire, brass fittings, aluminum siding, gutters and window frames. A magnet is the simple test. If it sticks it is ferrous and worth less. If it does not, it is worth more.

Where a Western Mass house tends to have it

This region has an unusual amount of it, because of what used to be built here. Old cast iron radiators from steam heat systems are extremely heavy and extremely good scrap. Cast iron bathtubs from pre war bathrooms run 250 to 350 pounds. Copper plumbing in a house from the 1920s is worth real money at the yard, which is also why empty houses get stripped.

Basements and garages collect the rest. A dead lawn mower, a broken grill, a bed frame, a filing cabinet, rolls of old wire, a bicycle. None of it is worth a special trip by itself, all of it goes in one load.

Weight is the thing to flag when you call. Metal is dense, so a small pile can be heavy enough to matter to a truck's legal limit. Four cast iron radiators are more of a problem than a garage full of cardboard, even though the cardboard looks like more.

The one thing to sort out first

A propane tank, an oxygen or acetylene cylinder, an old fuel oil tank or a car fuel tank is not scrap until it has been purged and certified empty. Haulers will not take a sealed pressure vessel, and no scrap yard will accept one. Those go to a specialist or, for propane, back to an exchange point. Say what you have on the phone rather than leaving it in the pile.