Scrappers - miscreants who steal perfectly good infrastructure and/or raw materials and then sell them to scrap yards for cash - have been a plague on Detroit. If you’re trying to build something new or renovate something old in Motown, you better have damn good security in place; if you don’t, you may find yourself rewiring or replumbing your building several times. Manhole covers? Shit, that’s like $20 lying in the street for anyone to take; never mind that the now-uncovered holes are crippling motorists and pedestrians.
Is this something that’s unique to Detroit? Maybe just run-down rust-belt cities? Or are scrappers a problem in every big city?
You would think scrap metal dealers would get suspicious about someone selling a manhole cover, wouldn’t you? But maybe some scrap metal dealers are only one step above the people selling the “scrap.”
Some years ago, the LEO agencies in our county got together to sting scrap yards. More than once, they went in with brand new wire spools(the big ones people make tables from) full of brand new wire and PG&E property tags hanging from them.
I recently moved out of my house and in the process, took a metric crapton of ferrous metal to the recycling yard. A couple of notes:
Nobody looked at what I was recycling. I weighed my vehicle before dumping the metal and then afterwards and got paid the difference. Nobody was checking the stuff I was chucking.
Recycling metal (at least in a large suburb south of Kansas City, Missouri) is not a way to get rich. The first trip I made, I recycled 120 pounds of ferrous metals, and received $2.40. That’s right, the going rate at the time (August or September of 2016) was $0.02/pound.
The second trip I made (just on general principles), the rate was $0.01/pound.
Conclusions:
A. Nobody is getting rich recycling a manhole cover; and,
B. Screw that … next time, I’m just tossing that crap into the trash!
IIRC, the metals that are usually stolen are aluminium and copper not ferrous(Iron/steel)
Aluminium scrap is worth ~$1.00/pound. Copper is worth $2-3.00/pound. Electrical wiring is usually made of either one of these two metals, hence wire thefts.
Back in the 20th century there was urban legend in Britain about villains stealing lead from church roofs — which has to be very very difficult. It being lead. And up on a roof.
Over the last decade this quaint practice has reawakened.
Something easy to prevent: you merely sell off the lead and use the proceeds to put on bats of some non-valuable material, in my view. Lighter too. Although some replacements can be noisy in rainy weather.
However church dioceses discourage this, due to not wanting to change stuff, and tradition; despite the fact not one parishioner in 10,000 has ever, or will ever see the leads, or where the leads once were.
I did some legitimate recycling about 5 years ago when I was cleaning out a gym full of weights. There were some manhole covers and they did ask for a receipt showing where we got it. In this case they were OK, no longer needed by the city and the owner had the paper work. At that time iron was very high and it was worth while, every trip in my van netted over a hundred dollars.
Iron is about a half cent a pound now, so a manhole cover is like a dollar.
Last year in our small town in Vermont somebody went on a crime spree. They stole about 8 bronze historical marker signs. They were about 2x2 feet mounted on posts.
What’s bronze going for? And what kind of slimeball recycler would buy them? I mean, there’s no doubt what they were.
A few months ago, some genius stole a bunch of live, high-voltage copper wire from the subway tracks in Queens. Amazingly, he managed not to fry himself, but he did shut down a large portion of the Rockaway Line for a couple days.
We’ve had enough streetlight wire stolen that the city standards now call for concrete (well, controlled density fill) to be poured into the pull boxes after the wires are run.
in ca its a 3 day hold on anything over 50 dollars and you have to have id …so anything heavy is barely worth the time and gas to bring it to a scrapyard
Most places wont take anything that’s not cans or bottles anyways unless it has a CRV stamp on it
Caltrans came up with a nice, theft proof box a few years ago that was extremely difficult to open. The thieves dug next to the box, cut the conduit, and stole the wire.
I remember an episode of Burn Notice where Michael defeated the steel core, deadbolted door by cutting through the single layer of sheetrock next to it.
Yeah. The spec was being re-written to include locking lids and by the time it was in review they had given up on it. I think at this point they’re just trying to make it more visible while they steal it.
Heard they found out that the original thefts were (or could be) a two step process. Someone would snip the wires during the day and leave them. Then someone would come by at night and pull them out.
On the up side, most of our pull boxes are set into the sidewalk.
They arrested the crooked scrap yard dealers and the cases got thrown out of court for “entrapment”?
It seems logical that the best way to cut down on these thefts is to continually run such stings. I very rarely hear of police doing this in my region. One assumes the crooks are extremely cagey, or else they donate lots of $$$ to local politicians to suppress sting operations.
Years ago, the wall thickness of oil-country tubulars (casing, drill pipe, and tubing) was checked by gamma-ray absorption. Today, ultrasonic methods are used, but 20 years ago, the technology for ultrasonic measurement just couldn’t compete with the speed and repeatability of gamma-ray absorption. The most common gamma ray source used was cesium 137. It was housed in a lead-lined box with a small aperature with a lead shutter. Very heavy.
On more than one occasion, some idiots would get their hands on one of these sources, busted it open to remove the lead and take the lead to the scrap yard.
One of the Little Rock malls had several of the large fire fighting valve handles stolen. They were mounted on the walls, made of brass and about 18" across. Big enough to easily turn the heavy pressure valves.
Estimates were in the thousands to replace a few bucks in brass. They aren’t off the shelf parts. Plus the danger if a fire breaks out at the mall.
There’s been a lot of air conditioner condensers taken for the copper. Again, thousands in damage for very little money.
