I deal with a trucking company out of Idaho. Their main business is scrap though. They own junk yards in Idaho.
They have various scrap business. Steel, copper, aluminum, etc. They also have dozens of semis and maxi flatbeds I contract for hauling lumber.
A couple years ago during a visit they showed me the warehouse where they recycle catalytic converters. They cut them apart remove the rare earth elements and separate the materials. The machine also vacuums up all the dust. A 55 gallon drum/barrel I was told was worth $12,000.
They would buy CC from all over the country. They had a website where they would send you a packing slip and you could UPS/FedEx the CC to them and then they would pay you.
Then he said the FBI got involved in tracking these CC around the country. Apparently, they were a pretty big buyer of volume. They stopped buying them unless you provided the VIN# to go along with it. They were afraid that they would be raided by the FBI and all their inventory would get seized.
FYI, he told me that the most valuable CC came from a Ford Expedition. It has two and they were worth $650 each scrap value. He also said that it took about two minutes to cut them out with a battery operated sawsall.
They also have a machine that removed the casing off of Romex wire and chopped the copper up into little pieces and blew that copper into a bin. The bins were 4000 pounds each.
They put 64M# on a flatbed going to a smelter in OR. Copper is worth between $3.50-4/pound. Do the math of what one truckload is worth. There is a lot of money in scrap.
If your vehicle's crash bag(s) were stolen, Airbag King offered replacement crash bags for your exact vehicle requirements at a reduced price from what the dealerships were charging.
Airbag King was a fence for vehicle crash bags stolen from around the country. Over time, Airbag King had select “vendors/suppliers” they could count on for orders for various vehicles with quick order fulfillment.
Airbag King would place orders from their “suppliers” who would then go out and steal the exact product needed.
Many people who purchased from Airbag King would end up purchasing back their own crash bad(s) that was stolen.
The company was finally busted by the FIB as were their “vendor/suppliers” and the nation wide epidemic of vehicle crash bag thefts was greatly reduced to occasional occurrence.
I’m so peeved with auto salvage yards.
When I started driving around the time Regan was first elected (almost) everything was based on negotiation. They would look at your car if you wanted to scrap it and say “how about 250?”. You would get a box of parts from them and they would look at it and say “how about a 20?”. (And I remember those exact prices)
NOW ?
They buy your car even if it runs for IRON scrap prices..let’s see right now is 6c a pound. Then turn around a sell you parts at roughly 40% new price. So let’s say you had a new but totaled car they might give you $240. They will get that back easily just in the tires. And everything, I mean everything from nuts to transmission is listed in a computer, you can’t bargain on anything.
almost a scam.