What's That Old 'Cat' Worth?

As Shop Owners, we generate SO much waste as a byproduct of our business that it’s staggering when you step back and look at it. It’s not a matter of blame or fault; it just comes with the territory of fixing cars on a daily basis.

So I’ve put together a list of some of the waste that we generate to make us take a hard look at our costs of disposal and perhaps some opportunities that we’re missing out on:

Anti-Freeze (I use recycled, so they haul the waste away for free)

Tires (are you charging for disposal at each sale?)

Waste Oil (They’re paying us .80 to .90 cents/gal right now)

Metal

Scrap metal is one of those things that we seem to generate a lot of. Like rotors and drums, ball joints, control arms, hub assemblies, struts & shocks, wheels, radiators, condensers, heater cores, evaporator cores, and exhaust systems.

The list could go on, but I wanted to stop there and point out some of your options. All of this metal has a value to it depending on what it is: steel, aluminum, copper, platinum, palladium and rhodium… Wait a minute—where did those last ones come from?? Well, those are the precious metals that are found in catalytic converters, and they’re worth a decent buck too.

Sure all the other metals can incrementally add to our bottom line. And since we generate SO much of them, it’s not hard to see them add up in a short time depending on how much you generate. But it does take up a lot of space to hold all this scrap metal, separate it into those individual metal types and then haul it away to be weighed and paid. Sometimes it’s better to allow them to come to you and give you a small amount for the service or give it away to a very good customer that will return the favor in repair work. Either way, make sure you’re getting SOMETHING for it.

It’s the precious ones I want to dive into here like platinum, palladium and rhodium; those that are found in cats. I used to pile these in the scrap metal bin and let my metal scrapper take them that is until I finally found an EASY and LUCRATIVE way to cash in on them. I’m always looking for ways to maximize my profits and since the local scrap yards are only paying between $5-$15 per cat, it just wasn’t worth my time to make a special trip there for the few we’d generate. That is until a shift started occurring in our industry.

Have you noticed lately the spike in catalyst efficiency codes that are necessitating the replacement of more cats than ever before? Well, I did and that made me start to look for an alternative to the local scrap yards meager compensation for some of the rarest and most precious metals we handle. I didn’t want to get into cutting them open to salvage the core where all the metals are imbedded—that’s too much work! So I started looking on line with my old pal Google and came upon a place in Lancaster, Pa. that specializes in catalytic converter scrapping.

Here’s the deal; they have an awesome website that has pictures of the most common cats and the current values of each of each of them. Their prices are between $10 and over $100—WOW!! Now that’s an attention getter. And the best part is their retrieval method. They have a FREE UPS pick up service that enables us to ship the cats in the mail at no cost to us whatsoever! Plus when they receive your cats they send you a confirmation email with the stated values for each one and how much the check will be. And that check arrives within a week of your confirmation.

When I first found these guys, I’ll admit I was skeptical about the whole process. It just looked too good to be true. So we looked up the 8 cats we were saving for this experiment on their web site and applied for an account so we could print out our free UPS pick up label. UPS comes almost every day anyways so that’s easy. Then the email came with our confirmation of receipt and the values of the cats—I was stunned as each one was valued exactly as they said it would, except a couple of them they actually paid more (I guess we looked them up wrong), oh darn. And when the check showed up I was almost giddy as I told Lisa to deposit them quickly just in case it was all a dream or something.

But it wasn't a dream—it’s really an honest, easy and straightforward recycling process that adds even more profits to our bottom line every week. In the short time since we’ve been dealing with them this year I’ve received hundreds and hundreds of dollars in checks and seen the average cat price to be around $50, and we’ve actually even received $110 for one.  So stop throwing away your cats, save some good shipping boxes (they’ll tell you the max dimensions on the site), and check out this valuable resource for yourselves—you won’t be disappointed!

Go to: www.SellYourCatsDirect.com

And when you do get your checks in the mail, send me an email telling me about your experiences too, or if you’ve found a better way to cash in.

Be Successful, And Be Around Those That Are Successful...

 

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Dave Striegel
RightWay Automotive Solutions
dave@ShopDoctor.com
(412) 543-8946