How this business makes money and who buys
A scrap yard buys metal from the public and from commercial sources, sorts and processes it, and sells it to mills, foundries or larger processors. The spread between what you pay and what the next buyer pays is the business. Volume, sorting accuracy and good freight make the spread bigger.
On the supply side you have three groups:
- Walk-in sellers: homeowners, hobbyists, people clearing a garage, and small-time collectors. High transaction count, low weight, and the most price-sensitive.
- Trade and contractor accounts: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, auto shops, demolition and roofing crews. Smaller volume than industry, but regular and loyal if treated fairly.
- Industrial generators: fabricators, machine shops and manufacturers producing turnings, offcuts and clippings. Typically served with roll-off containers or drop trailers, often under a standing arrangement.
Some yards also buy vehicles and run a separate flow of end-of-life cars, which has its own title and paperwork steps.
Where marketing and software usually break down
Price is the headline. Customers want it fast, and it moves with commodity markets. Many yards have no website at all, or a page built years ago with a phone number and no prices. That puts everything on the phone.
The second break is account blindness. The counter sees a stream of tickets. Few yards track which industrial customers fill a container every three weeks and which have gone quiet. A fabricator who switches yards over a pickup that ran late rarely announces it.
Third, dispatch for roll-off service runs on text messages and memory. Container placement, pulls and tickets need to be connected: who has which container, when it was last emptied, and what material is inside.
What we would build first and why
Start with the front door, because it is cheap and shows results quickly.
- A page that answers ‘what do you pay’. Materials, grades, prep tips, hours and a posted date. This cuts repetitive calls and gives search engines a clear target.
- A tuned Google Business Profile and material pages. Accurate hours, yard photos showing the entrance and scale, and pages for each major material and service.
- Automatic replies for price and hours questions. The same questions arrive by phone, text and web chat all day, and staff at the counter should not be answering them.
Then move to accounts: a simple CRM for industrial and trade customers with material, container and pickup frequency, plus a basic report from scale data showing which accounts are growing or slipping.
Seasonality and operational nuances
Scrap flow follows construction, demolition and the weather. Spring cleanups and summer building projects raise walk-in and contractor volume. Winter tends to slow it. Industrial scrap tracks manufacturing activity, so it moves with the economy more than the calendar.
Prices change the behavior of your customers. When the market rises, lines grow and counter staff get stretched. When it falls, sellers hold material. Your marketing should shift with it: communicate hours and wait times when busy, and push account outreach and pickup service when you need volume.
Safety and trust drive repeat business. A clean, organized scale area and visible posted grading rules reassure first-time sellers. Photographs of the actual yard help, because customers worry about walking into the wrong place.
Compliance varies by state and municipality, including seller identification, recordkeeping and rules for particular materials. State your own requirements clearly on the site, and confirm what applies to you with your state environmental agency or local authority.
What good looks like after the first quarter
The phone rings less for price checks and more for real jobs. Counter staff stop answering the same three questions. Your industrial accounts show up in one list with their last pull date, so a container that has sat full for a week gets noticed. You also have a record of which walk-in sellers come back, which tells you where a loyalty note or a posted bulk-buyer rate is worth the effort.