Who ships scrap metal, and when do they book?

Commodity playbook

Who ships scrap metal

Head offices of four processors and mill groups. Radius runs 103 facilities, OmniSource about 75, and Sims more than 230 yards in North America.

Ask for the yard manager or the traffic desk at the processing facility. This is a trading business as much as an industrial one: when the scrap price moves, volumes move with it and the freight requirement changes within weeks. Carriers who can flex up on short notice are genuinely valuable and there is little competition for the work.

Where it hauls

Yards sit where the metal is: industrial cities, ports and everywhere with a population. Processors run dense networks of collection yards feeding a smaller number of shredders and processing facilities, which in turn feed electric arc furnace mills across the south and midwest. Because scrap is heavy and low-value per ton, hauls are short by necessity and the volume is in frequency. Export scrap adds a port leg. The processors to know:

How to open

Mentioning the price is the credential. Scrap volumes are driven by a monthly price settlement, and a broker who knows that is not the same as one calling about a load.

Qualifying questions

• What grade of scrap, and what does it weigh? Shredded, busheling, plate and structural, turnings and borings all load differently and weigh differently. Grade decides the trailer and the target weight, so get it before you commit equipment.
• End dump, flatbed, or roll-off? Loose shredded scrap goes in end dumps or walking floors. Bundles, plate and structural ride flatbeds. Containers and roll-offs serve the collection side. Three different jobs.
• Is the yard scale certified, and where do I weigh? This is a business transacted by weight, so the scale ticket is the document that matters. Confirm where you weigh in and out and who holds the ticket.
• Any radiation or contamination screening? Mills screen inbound scrap for radioactive sources and contamination, and a rejected load is a serious problem. Ask what the screening process is and what happens if a load flags.
• Is this going to a mill or the port? Mill delivery runs to a melt schedule. Export scrap runs to a vessel and a hard cutoff. Different urgency and different paperwork, so establish which.

When to call

January and February, when annual arrangements get made, but this is genuinely a year-round business. The real timing signal is the monthly scrap price: when it rises, material that has been sitting in yards moves all at once, and the carriers already in the rotation take that volume.