As commodities markets churn, scrap metal profits pile up

WESTPORT -- Bring out your junk.

Scrap dealers across New England have doubled the prices they pay for some metal because of rising world commodities markets. As a result, old bedframes, candlesticks, pipes, silverware, tools, hot water heaters, and wheelbarrows are being emptied out of basements and sold to dealers.

''If it's made out of metal, it's coming here," said Mark Gitlin, manager of Mid-City Scrap Iron & Salvage Co. Gitlin estimates he has bought 20 percent more material from homeowners this spring than last. He's also hired two more workers to handle the rush.

''People are leaving here with more money, and I'm sure they're telling their friends," Gitlin said.

The newcomers are easy to spot, he said, pointing out several newer SUVs or pickups that stood out amid the battered trucks driven by the scruffy regulars -- ''peddlers," as they're known in the trade, who prowl the streets searching for scrap full time.

John Miranda of Westport stopped by the scrapyard one afternoon this week with an old radiator and some damaged auto rims in the back of his Suburban. Gitlin paid him $45 for the load. ''That's half a tank of gas," Miranda said.

Mike Cambra of Westport pulled his black GMC into the yard, bearing a rusty furnace. Recently he was helping a relative strip some siding from a house and a stream of passersby offered to carry it off. Eventually, ''We had to lock up the aluminum," Cambra said. In front of him, five cranes sorted bits from giant ferrous piles to be taken to large mills from Pennsylvania to China to be melted down to become raw material for new pipes, gutters, beams, or appliances, and resold.

Scrapyards from Somerville to Greenfield report a similar rush. In Monroe, Conn., scrap dealer Tom Mele said he's seeing more homeowners than ever bringing in screen doors and lawn furniture or siding. ''We're in what we're calling awning and gutter season," he said. Mele said he's paying about twice the rates of a year ago for items made from metals like copper, brass, zinc, or aluminum. A year ago he would have paid 25 cents a pound for aluminum gutters; now he pays 50 cents, or $25 for the average 50-pound load.

Driving the interest is a worldwide boom in commodities prices not seen in decades. Aluminum, for instance, traded at an average price of $112.57 per 100 pounds in March on the New York Mercantile Exchange, far above its $65.86 average in March of 2003. Steel was selling for $28.37 per hot-rolled sheet on average in March, nearly twice the $15.14 at the same point three years ago.

Economists and traders say the prices reflect rising demand for industrial goods from the Far East, plus speculation in futures contracts. Both represent an opportunity for US recyclers who can supply mills with much of their raw material. In just the first two months of this year, recyclers exported 287,540 tons of scrap iron, more than double the amount in the first two months of 2005, though shipments of other materials were down. In all of 2005, US scrapyards processed 70 million tons of iron and steel, 4.1 million tons of aluminum, and 1.5 million tons of copper, says trade group the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.

By contrast, in 1943, in the middle of World War II, US industry consumed just 56 million tons of scrap iron and steel. Then, it was about patriotism, with much of the metal donated by the public to make ships and tanks.

Now, it's about the money. ''Scrap responds very quickly to price," said Bob Garino, the trade group's director of commodities. Quincy construction-firm owner Jay Cashman recently sold a barge that had been moored unused off East Boston for years. A Baltimore salvage yard paid $70 a ton, plus $50,000 to have it towed to a Maryland drydock. At lower prices, Cashman said, ''it would be sitting on that mooring still."

For consumers, higher metals prices are likely to mean rising construction, plumbing, or electrical bills. In Wakefield, Robert Berman, president of Avon Supply Co., said he's now selling a common type of copper pipe, half-inch type L, for around $1.10 a foot, twice its price in 2004.

Price increases are unlikely to be dramatic for homeowners, since the cost of piping and other metal materials is but a small fraction of a total project's bill. However, the increases have been hard on commercial contractors who bid on jobs years ago, when prices were lower, but didn't stock up on materials until now, said Hugh Kelleher, executive director of the Plumbing, Heating and Cooling Contractors Association of Greater Boston.

For contractors, a small silver lining is that the scrap salvaged from job sites now is worth more. In previous years, ''if we were doing demolition, there would be old copper and we'd use the money to have an extra-special coffee break. Now if you have the same scrap, you can go out for a nice meal on Newbury Street," Kelleher said.

Precious-metals dealers say media attention to record metals prices has brought in more people. At J.J. Teaparty, a rare coin dealer in Boston, numismatist Barry McCarthy said walk-in business is up 40 percent.

Brookline antiques dealer Corey Warn said he recently hauled out two shoeboxes full of battered silverware and broken gold watches, which he sold to a precious-metals dealer for $1,900. He'd piled up the pieces for 20 years, after gold and silver hit their previous highs.

''Once the silver market dropped dead in the 1980s, most dealers just threw it aside for the times like now," Warn said.

Other items turn out to be no treasure at all.

''One guy came in with Reynolds Wrap and thought it was platinum. I told him, go bake a meat loaf," McCarthy said.

For some in the scrap trade, the higher prices can be a mixed blessing. Since metal is worth more, curbside discards are harder to find, said several dust-covered peddlers dropping off their loads at Mid-City Scrap.

''More people are taking it in themselves" to resell rather than leaving the scraps behind, said one, Nelson Martinez. Six days a week he makes a circuit of auto-repair businesses and construction sites from Rhode Island to Cape Cod. On an average day he and a partner, Steve Costa, will make a total of $500, they said, and spend $40 on gas. ''It's been a struggle," Costa said. But when prices drop, he said, people will begin discarding their trash again.

Costa might have been referring to the owner of a South Dartmouth auto-body shop, Paul Amarello, who arrived soon after with an old axle he sold for $20. He had more like it, he said, which he previously would have given to whoever would haul it away. Now that he knows how much it's worth, he said, ''I'll bring it myself."

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.