Scrap

[Not Anumber]

Are scrappies still paying useful money for cars. I know a year or so back the price of scrap went right up and they would pay £ 200 cash for anything that could be driven in, £100 for a knocked about/ part stripped non runner they had to collect. Just agreed to pay a mate £ 200 for his old Merc - I'm just swapping the front callipers with mine, a couple of bits of trim and the speakers and was hoping to still get near £ 200 back from the scrappy. Is this still feasible or are they paying a lot less now ?

[jmh]

Hi there,

It really depends on what sort of scrap yard you take it to.

The best one I have been to around the East Midlands is Chris Allsopp and they pay great prices because they actually do the seperation and grading of the different metals and types of scrap. As such the last car that I weighed in (about a week ago) I got £140 a ton.

If you take the car to a smaller yard that just passes it on to one of these bigger scrap yards to be graded and sorted out you are looking to get about half the going rate for scrap (so about £60 - £70 a ton).

I have weighed cars in without the log books too, in my case they wanted my drivers licence and took the details of the vehicle I had arrived in. Having said that the car was still pretty recognisable and if they had wanted to, they could check that the car was mine to destroy (which they might have done while I was waiting for them to take it off the trailer). The only difference was that they were not able to notify the DVLA that the car had been scrapped (although I got a certificate of destruction).

Another tip is to seperate different parts of the car if you can too, so you can weigh them in seperately.

For example:

A scrap cat can go for anything between £10 and £200
Alloy wheels tend to go for a £10 a piece
Aluminimum (cylinder heads/gear boxes) tend to be about 3 x the rate for normal scrap
Any form of motor (starter, cooling fans, alternator etc.) also tend to get good rates too.

So with a bit of effort, a car that you would give a way for free or get £20 for could actually get you back a reasonable amount (£200 - £300).

I hope that helps, I guess it all comes down to whether or not you can move the car easily and you know of one of the bigger scrap yards around to take the price.

Cheers,

Jonathan