Detroit Scrap City

[ever_helpful]

From In These Times

Rust Belt harvest

In the last decade, 250,000 people have left Detroit. An estimated 60,000 buildings sit abandoned. As the city empties, the millions of tons of copper, aluminum, brass, steel, iron and tin used to erect the Motor City are being shipped out, in the form of scrap, much of it to China.

As Detroit’s jobs continue to disappear and the foreclosure crisis swells its ranks of vacant buildings, an increasing number of residents have turned to scrapping. For some, like Mo, scrapping is a profession. For others, it’s just another hustle, like collecting cans or passing out handbills, one of the dozens of marginal occupations in a city in which a quarter of the population has no job.

“First week of the month is always the slowest,” says Stanley Beltzman of McNichols Scrap Iron & Metal, a scrap yard on the city’s east side. “That’s when the checks come in.”

Free market principles apply as much to scrapping as they do to any industry. When scrap metal prices shoot up, more people get into the game. In February, scrap copper reached $4.57 per pound, a 40-year high. At around the same time, Will, 49, found himself freshly out of prison and jobless.

Much of the harvested scrap is stolen from homes and buildings such as the Ford. Scrap yards are not legally allowed to accept stolen scrap. All yards in Detroit require that scrappers selling metal provide identification and the address from which the scrap came. Some demand more thorough documentation or even fingerprints.

Yet few scrap yards do much checking, and scrappers have ways of evading regulation. For example, most yards only accept scrap delivered by vehicle. So scrappers without automobiles hire vans or trucks—”jitneys”—to haul their loads. Drivers charge $35 to haul scrap across town, but only $20 if the scrappers have made it just outside a yard. If all else fails, a scrapper can sell his metal to an unlicensed scrap broker. Most of these brokers operate out of their homes, using scales in the basement or backyard. An illegal broker will pay half what a licensed one will, but they’re open 24 hours and never ask where the scrap came from.

Nationally, Detroit’s scrappers have a reputation among security experts for unusual organization and aggressiveness. Virtually everyone who lives in the city has either been the victim of a scrapper or knows someone who has...

[1KielsonDrive]

Excellent post. Thank you.

[drjeff]

I am not at all a violent person, and don't even own a gun, but scrappers really make me want to shoot somebody.

[Mikeg]

It's not just a city of Detroit problem. Last week the pizza shop in Troy where my son works had their kitchen ventilators stolen off the roof. They lost two days of business and wages, not to mention the cost to replace the stuff that was stolen.

[Zacha341]

Yeah, it's such a problem in Detroit many shops, stores and businesses have to ring their roofs with razor wire to keep the scrappers from removing gratings, security bars, metal siding, air conditioning etc.

I am not at all a violent person, and don't even own a gun, but scrappers really make me want to shoot somebody.

[luckycar]

That's the Detroit I'll always remember.As a former scrap dealer,the best one I ever saw was the guy who brought me an stainless steel pot with still warm oatmeal in it!Another eastdide favorite from the 1980s was the bang on the door.If nobody came to the door,a crowbar was used to pull it down.I had hundreds.Another good customer was the DFP.A few times a month we would get trash cans full of wire that came out of the rubble,sometimes some copper pipe.Delivered right off the firetruck.

[Searay215]

I blame all the scrap yards in the Detroit area.....you can not tell me that they see the same people day in and day out with stuff and hear about thefts of the very same items and they don't know whats going on? Please!!!! And why hasn't there been a sting or two at these places? Are the cities compliant in this? Turning a blind eye? And if these TV stations love to fight crime, why haven't the done a sting?
Something is wrong here.....Maybe we're the dummies for not getting in on this. I am so pissed over this I could scream!!
Are you listinging Channels 2,4, 7 and the others?