Gold from Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap: Part 3 - Getting Equipment, Finding Markets

09/10/09
Mike Meuser
RecyclingSecrets.com

This is the 3rd in an ongoing series of articles about my experience in the electronic salvage, recycling and gold recovery business. New installments, resources, how-to articles and news can be found at RecyclingSecrets.com

In the last post I talked about looking at the material and bringing back some samples so I could begin to develop a market for the salvage - note that selling for reuse almost always brings in more revenue than recycling for the metal value.

In this post I'll talk a bit about getting equipment and marketing.

Once I saw the material, I knew that I needed a real truck. I had brought back quite a few large batteries. Each 2 volt cell weighed approximately 500 pounds and was about a foot square and 2 feet tall. I lived in a rural area where a lot of folks ran alternative energy systems so I put an ad in the local free advertising paper looking to sell the batteries or trade for a large flatbed truck.

I got a response almost immediately. A fellow had a nice old GMC 5 ton flatbed. It didn't run well, but he was willing to trade it for a set of batteries. Recall that I bid so low on the batteries that I hoped that i wouldn't get them - well, I'm sure glad I did - they turned out to be a "goldmine." It took about $200 to get the truck running well and I thought, "now I'm in business."

I thought I could rent a forklift in Nevada and along with the truck, haul all the stuff back to California. NOT! Turned out the only forklift was a giant weighing 14,000 pounds and was 150 miles away. It took me 5 hours to haul it all the way to the station and 7 hours to get it back once I was loaded. Not good.

So... my next task was to get a forklift. That first load with the 5 ton truck was almost entirely batteries - 10 sets in all--- continued at recyclingsecrets.com

More to come. New articles will be listed at RecyclingSecrets.com (news, tools, and resources are also available here) and also at the Recycling Secrets Blog.