My buddy and I made our semi regular trip to the scrap metal
recycler today. We don’t go very often, just when we have accumulated a fairly
large amount of metal. I know, you are thinking “Just how much metal can you
accumulate?” Well, as it turns out, today it was about 860 pounds which
magically turned into $24.60.
Most of that was Ken’s, but I had a few pounds to contribute
and you just never know, the next trip I may have a lot of metal. Ken’s
neighbours give him metal that they don’t really know what to do with. Nice of
them to drop off their junk don’t you think?
The reason we go to the Metal recycling place is that
instead of charging us to drop the stuff off, we make money. Once we took the
metal to the dump, knowing that they had a bin where you could put metal. We
thought that dropping off the metal was free since the city just takes it to
the scrappers anyways and gets paid for it. Not so, they charged us a ton
because we had almost a ton. That was the last time we went there.
Normally a trip goes pretty smoothly, in and out in about
ten minutes and then the coffee is on them. Today, they opened a different gate
and when we got in, there was a line up. The way it works is that you drive on
to a large scale, get weighed and then you are told where to go to off load the
metal. Once you have off loaded the metal, you drive around the yard and back
to the scales and get weighed empty. Then you go park the vehicle and go inside
where you are given money. It took us about an hour and a half! They were
slammed! WTF! How does a junk yard get busy?
The guys ahead of us were morons and seemed to take forever.
I still can’t figure out what the problem was. I would have said something, but
being a coward, more or less, I held my tongue and just baked in the front of
the truck. The good thing is that we were in a junk yard and they have the
neatest vehicles. They had the magnetic crane which would pick up a shit pile
of metal from one pile and swing it over to drop it on another pile. It made no
sense really, but it looked like a lot of fun. They had regular huge cranes as
well and I saw them pick up a car just like in the movies. It was cool too.
They had massive bull dozers which would push a pile of scrap around the yard. At
one point, the crane picked up this huge… well, it looked like a brillo pad and
used it to sweep the ground. I don’t think anyone really knew what they were
doing, other than having a real fun time.
The people employed there more than likely think of what
they do as a job, but I would willingly pay to have a chance to work one of
those cranes or drive a bull dozer. That is the kind of shit I have on my
bucket list, not climbing some big ass mountain or wrestling an angry
alligator. I have to figure out a way to take Hurricane and Tornado there
sometime pretty soon. There eyes would bug out and not go back in for months. I
am pretty sure their mom would okay the trip. Pretty sure…
They should install a viewing stand. I would go and watch
just as I am sure other old farts would. We could heckle the angry truck
drivers. If they wore uniforms we could cheer on our favourite team, since
there won’t be any hockey this year, watching a scrap yard might just be the
new spectator sport.
I’ve got five bucks on the “Wrecking Machine”
No comments:
Post a Comment