Most scrap never gets recycled for one boring reason: moving it is a hassle. No trailer, no spare Saturday, and a tip that charges you to take metal that is actually worth money. So it sits behind the shed for another two years.
Free pickup exists to solve that. Here is how it runs.
Step one: the phone call
Tell us your suburb and roughly what you have. You do not need an inventory. "About twenty metres of copper pipe, an old air con unit and a trailer load of steel" is plenty to work with.
We will tell you on that call what the metal is likely to pay and whether the load justifies a truck. If it does not, we will say so rather than waste your day.
Step two: what counts as worth picking up
It is about value, not just volume. A couple of hundred kilos of mixed steel is worth a pickup. So is a much smaller load if it is heavy on copper, brass or motors. Half a wheelbarrow of light aluminium offcuts usually is not, and you are better off dropping that in to the yard.
Step three: the pickup itself
We turn up in the agreed window, load it, and weigh it. You see the scales. Then you get paid on the spot, before we leave, not on an invoice in three weeks.
What we are not doing is quoting you one number on the phone and a lower one in your driveway once the gear is already on the truck. The phone number is based on the grade you described, and if the load is different in person we tell you why before anything moves.
Have your ID handy. It is standard at any decent yard, and South Australia's new scrap metal laws will make it compulsory once they commence.
What to have ready
- Clear access, so the truck can get reasonably close to the pile.
- Metal separated from rubbish. Timber, plasterboard, tyres and general waste cannot go on the truck.
- Gas bottles and anything pressurised set aside and pointed out. We handle those differently.
- Anything with refrigerant in it left whole. Do not cut the lines on an air conditioner, the gas has to be recovered by someone licensed.
- Someone home who can point at what is going and what is staying. Fences and sheds have been taken by mistake before.
Where we pick up
We are based at 35 Jacobsen Cres, Holden Hill, open 7 days, 7am to 5pm. The free pickup zone is Adelaide's north-east around it. That covers Hillcrest, Modbury, Tea Tree Gully, Campbelltown, Windsor Gardens, Hope Valley, Highbury, Valley View, Para Hills, Gilles Plains, Dernancourt and Newton.
Further out across Adelaide, ring anyway. If the load is big enough we will still come.