Scrap Metal Removal Calgary

Why scrap jobs price differently

General junk costs money to dispose of, because the landfill charges a tipping fee by weight. Scrap metal is the opposite — a scrap yard pays for it by weight.

That flips the economics of a job. A pickup that is mostly steel means our disposal cost is negative rather than positive, and we price accordingly. A pile of old steel shelving, a dead furnace and three bicycles is a much cheaper call than the same volume of broken particleboard furniture.

It is worth telling us on the phone if a job is metal-heavy. It is the one thing that reliably makes a quote go down.

Ferrous, non-ferrous, and why it matters

Ferrous metal — steel and iron, anything a magnet sticks to — is by far the most common. Appliances, shelving, rebar, structural steel, car parts and old machinery are almost all ferrous. It is low value per kilogram but there is usually a lot of it.

Non-ferrous metal — copper, brass, aluminium, stainless steel and lead — is worth substantially more per kilogram. Copper pipe and wire from a plumbing or electrical renovation, brass fittings, aluminium siding, window frames and radiators all fall here.

You do not need to sort it yourself. But if a job includes a meaningful amount of copper or brass, mention it, because it changes the value of the load.

Appliances, furnaces and hot water tanks

The heaviest scrap in a typical Calgary home is mechanical. A furnace is largely sheet steel. A hot water tank is a steel cylinder. Ductwork is galvanised steel and there is often a lot of it in an older basement.

This material comes up constantly on renovations, and it is the reason a mechanical replacement job is cheap for us to clear. The old furnace, the old tank and the stripped-out ductwork are all scrap, not garbage.

Fridges, freezers and air conditioners are a special case. They are scrap steel, but the refrigerant has to be recovered by a certified technician before the shell can be processed. That is handled through the appropriate facility, not at the curb.

Tires and what happens to them

Tires are not metal, but they come up in almost every scrap and garage job so they are worth covering here. Alberta runs a province-wide tire recycling program, funded by a levy paid when tires are bought, and used tires are processed rather than landfilled.

What that means practically is that tires cannot go into a general disposal load. They are handled separately, so tell us how many you have when you book. Rims on or off both work, though rims are separated as scrap steel.