Scrap Metal Removal in Chicopee, MA

Everything else in a truck costs money to get rid of. Metal is the exception. A scrap yard pays for it, and that changes what you get quoted.

Massachusetts has kept metal out of landfills since 1 July 2006, so it has to be pulled out and sent to a yard no matter what. Because the yard pays something for it, a load that is mostly metal gets priced under the same volume of ordinary household junk. A big clean pile of steel is sometimes collected for nothing at all.

Do not expect a check, though. A household amount of scrap is worth a modest sum, and it rarely covers a truck, two people and the drive. Metal lowers your bill. It does not reverse it.

What counts

Steel makes up most of it: appliance shells, filing cabinets, bed frames, shelving, cast iron radiators and tubs, weight plates, mower decks. The valuable part is everything that is not steel, meaning copper pipe and wire, brass fittings, aluminum siding and gutters. A magnet settles it instantly. Sticking means steel and the lower price. No pull at all means you are holding the good stuff.

Chicopee houses are full of it

This city was built on metal. Ames made swords here, Fisk made tires, Stevens and Savage made rifles, Spalding made sporting goods, and the housing that went up around those payrolls is now a hundred years old. Cast iron radiators pulled out during a heating conversion are everywhere in this city, and they are excellent scrap at 300 to 600 pounds each.

Old bathrooms give up cast iron tubs at 250 to 350 pounds. Houses from the twenties still carry copper plumbing worth real money at a yard, which is also why empty properties get stripped by people who are not supposed to be in them.

Say if the load is heavy when you call. Metal is dense, so a small stack can matter to a truck's legal weight limit in a way that a garage full of cardboard never will. Four radiators cause more trouble than a room full of boxes.

Sort this out first

A propane tank, an oxygen or acetylene cylinder, an old heating oil tank or a car fuel tank is not scrap until somebody has purged it and certified it empty. No hauler will load a sealed pressure vessel and no yard will take one. Those go to a specialist, or back to an exchange cage in the case of propane. Pull them out of the pile before anyone arrives.