Around here, we have places that deal with prime, seconds, scrap, and
surplus/junk/salvage. A lot of the places deal in a couple of those.

Prime is full lengths, the good stuff. Seconds are short pieces, off
spec, bent ends, a bit rusty, etc. Scrap is sorted using a magnet on a
crane. And surplus/junk is whatever gets sorted out of the scrap
process. You need to find places that sell seconds or salvage.

I buy most of my project stuff as seconds from either of a couple places
that sell prime and seconds. Not as cheap as the dump but I can go buy
30', get a fair price, pay with a credit card, and get on with it.

I might add that when I did this sort of thing for a living, I would
commonly by "product of a coil" (as in a 10,000 to 20,000 pound mill
coil of steel) or a full truck load (44,000 pounds on a flat bed). When
you buy that much at a time, you get to specify what you want and they
say 'yes sir'. Things like special handling of 3" square stock where all
the forklifts got carpet pads to minimize nicks.

SCOTT wrote:
The town where I live has started not letting you take anything from
the scrap metal bin at the town dump. Apparently they have a contract
with the removal company that requires all metal brought in to stay
there. So it looks like I need to find a new source for bits and
pieces. I haven't tried to buy from scrap yards before. Do you guys do
this, if so is there repairable machinery that comes up there, or is it
all shredded, or what?

Scott