FELLSMERE — Since there are only two places metal can come from – out of the ground or out of the waste stream – large-scale metal recycling serves an important role in saving precious natural resources.
Mike Carroll learned the value of scrap metal recycling initially less out of concern for the environment and more out of a desire to improve his bottom line.
As an aluminum contractor, when work slowed down, he started looking twice at the bits and pieces he had left over from a job.
“I knew there had to be pretty good money in it. I used to take my scrap to be recycled,” he said. “Recycling is a really big part of the world today, you’ve only got so many natural resources and you rely on recycling. Without recycling, prices for everything would be through the roof.”
Carroll and his business partner thought they knew what they were doing, so they opened a scrap yard in Vero Beach, Indian River Scrap Metal.
“When we started out, I didn’t know hardly anything and we didn’t have the right equipment,” Carroll said. “We learned a lot from my buyers, they’ve been really good to me and taught me so much.”
They found out quickly that there’s more to the business than meets the eye.
They learned that the materials get shipped elsewhere in Florida, out of state and even to China where they are melted down and reused.
Carroll visited the plant of one of his buyers, Trademark Metals in Rockledge and saw how they process recycled machines and metals through a large-scale shredder. That recycler, he said, is located on the railroad line, so they put materials on box cars and send them up the supply chain by train.
Nearly six years later, Carroll sold his part of that business and opened North County Metal Recyclers with his wife, Michelle. Both long-time Indian River County residents and graduates of Vero Beach High School, the Carrolls bought property and settled in Fellsmere in 2001, so their business is now a lot closer to home.
They opened the doors of the 16,000-square-foot indoor facility late last year in a building that used to house Antiquo Stone, a decorative concrete plant, at 25 North Myrtle Street, just a few blocks northwest of Fellsmere City Hall. The city, Carroll said, has been a very business-friendly neighbor.
“The City of Fellsmere has been great, they’ve welcomed us with open arms,” he said. “From the permitting to the whole process from beginning to end.”
The big advantage of his new place, Carroll said, is being indoors. The City of Fellsmere does not permit scrap yards, so if he wanted to do business inside city limits, he had to focus on metal recycling and absolutely not be anything that resembled or operated as a scrap yard or junk yard.
The nearly five-acre property is neat and organized; parking lot covered with a fresh layer of dark gravel and it’s inviting to customers, even those who don’t frequent industrial districts.
The toughest part sometimes for his customers is just bringing their scrap and not being able to find treasures to take home.
“I don’t do any retail,” Carroll said, making him different from a scrap yard, which might purchase junk cars or motors and have them in a lot for people to scavenge for parts.
No matter what the resale value of the metal that comes into the shop might be, it gets sold off to be melted down or shredded and poured back into the supply chain of raw materials for manufacturing.
The Carrolls earn a living playing the market, so to speak.
The metals recycling business is all about supply and demand. When the economy is good, there’s lots of construction, lots of scrap and lots of demand for manufacturing.
When the economy’s bad, industry doesn’t produce so much scrap. In a time of rising demand for metals when the economy is improving, prices go up.
When demand is down, prices level off, but the metals he recycles are still a finite resource, so it’s pretty stable income.
“It’s like the stock market,” he said. “You’ve got the metals market and I can check to see what everything is selling for, just like the stock market.”
The Carrolls employ seven people who do the weighing, unloading and sorting of the materials, all indoors away from the rain, the wind and the heat.
All the scales, whether they be the floor scales inside the building or the 70-foot-long drive-up truck scale outdoors, have a digital display of the weight so customers can see the numbers themselves.
After the metal is weighed, the staff, or often Carroll himself gives customers a ticket showing what they recycled.
“Then they go over here to the office and they get paid,” Carroll said.
A glance at the price list, which can fluctuate weekly, reveals that copper is the most dear of the commonly found scrap metals Carroll purchases from customers.
Scrap copper tubing and fixtures fetch $2 to $3 per pound, depending on the type of copper. Brass pays $1.40 per pound, stainless steel 50 cents per pound and lead 30 cents per pound.
Aluminum cans are worth 55 cents per pound at North County Metal Recyclers.
Other items that Carroll will take off the hands of local residents and businesses are electric wire, batteries, cars and trucks, electric motors, air-conditioning coils and compressors.
“We’ll take water heaters, appliances, any kind of scrap iron. It’s an outlet for people who are unemployed, you don’t have to have a lot of equipment to do it,” he said.
Though he welcomes any individual who has scrap metal to recycle, Carroll said he’s trying to build up a clientele of not only individuals but also contractors, who have a steady supply of the materials he recycles.
“We’ve been getting quite a bit of business so far, I’ve got a good following of customers I’ve dealt with, and it’s really about word of mouth,” Carroll said.
Customers will weigh the prices he’s offering with the cost of driving to Vero or Melbourne and they’ll investigate where they’ll get the most net cash out of their scrap.
“Everybody stays competitive, and you know what the prices are because you hear them from your customers, and I have my prices higher right now because we’re trying to get people in here. We’d really like to get the plumbers, the electricians and the air-conditioning contractors.”
If people with a lot of scrap to recycle can’t get to North County Metal Recyclers, Carroll said he can drop off a roll-off recycling container on a jobsite or at a business and pick it up. He’s permitted to do so for his own use to facilitate recycling.
“If they’re going to have a lot of stuff and it’s going to be trip after trip for them, it makes sense to drop off a can for them,” he said.
