On a muggy July morning, sitting behind the wheel of his Chevy pickup, Bill Winkler pulls an old cotton trailer into the scrap yard. A set of steel jaws reaches down and snatches an Evinrude outboard motor, mangled wire and tin, and tosses them like feathers onto a mountain of metal. Counting the cash - $232 - from 3,300 pounds, Winkler said he is taking advantage of high prices and cleaning up his Moffat farm.
“This junk’s been laying around here for years,” said Winkler. “It wasn’t making any money in the pasture.”
Attractive steel prices and a heightened awareness toward the planet have Central Texans recycling their junk like never before.
This metamorphosis from scrap to new steel products begins at Temple Iron and Metal Co., a bustling and noisy 20-acre recycling facility on the city’s northeast side.
As the sun rises higher above this humming recycling complex, one thinks of a beehive where the nectar is old water heaters and fire hydrants. Billy Bachmayer says the company he bought six years ago employs about 50 people who are working overtime to keep up.
“I would have thought a year ago or so, there wasn’t going to be any more refrigerators or stuff come in because there was so many … but they never stop coming,” said Bachmayer.
When he bought the 75-year-old company, which handles all of the city’s recycling, he said it changed his way of thinking. Today Bachmayer considers himself an environmentalist. And he says many people recycle not for the money, although the price of scrap steel has dramatically increased over the last few years, but because they consider it civic duty.
“There are so many people now that I see coming in that would just as soon not get anything, that just want to recycle,” said Bachmayer. “And strangely enough, it’s the older people that realize what’s happening to our world, that we’re filling up everything and if we don’t do something it’s going to be bad.”
Bachmayer said he keeps five trucks busy hauling roll-off Dumpsters to various manufacturers such as Wilsonart, a major Temple employer.
“Very few people know, and they don’t understand how big a business, how big an operation it is,” Bachmayer said, pointing out they recycle about 10 million pounds of steel per month.
With scrap steel prices now ranging from 7 to 12 cents per pound, and an average pickup load worth almost $100, thieves are also trying to cash in. Bachmayer said this is an ongoing problem. To sell an automobile for scrap, the “peddler” must present vehicle title, or certificate of destruction, and provide proper identification. If someone or something seems suspicious, Bachmayer said they call police. The difference today, with high scrap prices, thieves are becoming more bold.
“When it was cheap ... they weren’t stealing as much obvious stuff,” Bachmayer said.
Not long after the Moffat farmer headed back for another load, the “Junk Man” arrived in a pickup and trailer with plywood sideboards. He has developed a network of places to find scrap.
“People call me every night. When their yards are dirty ... I go and pick it up,” said Oscar Delgado, a wiry former construction worker.
South of Temple, at Holland Scrap and Recycling, two giant grapples that look like prehistoric vultures hover above piles of gnarled metal. Co-owner Paul Williams started as a “grunt” in the business 32 years ago in East Texas. He said they take in scrap from up to 100 miles away. He attributes the record high prices to demand from overseas, especially the Far East.
“China is a big buyer, trying to bring their infrastructure up,” Williams said.
Watching a man unload a pickup load of aluminum wheels, Williams explained these full-time sellers are creative in developing sources they can mine for scrap. They carefully guard their secrets.
“He has his own honey hole. Like fishing, he’s not sharing that information with anybody,” Williams said.
Williams said the steel boom includes small communities that have drives in which they encourage citizens to throw their metal scrap in dumpsters for recycling. And rural property owners are coming in behind their ancestors, hauling off old equipment, and making a tidy sum doing it.
“A lot of people are cleaning up their farm,” Williams said. “Anything that is steel has value.”
