As a demolition contractor, you frequently find yourself with several dumpsters filled to the brim with refuse. Then you have to pay to dispose of it. What if you could actually make a little profit off of some of it? Intrigued? Start with your next factory demolition. 

A factory is full of metal—metric tons of it, to be precise. The metal does not have to be in perfect shape. It just has to be metal. Here are several things you can do with that metal, some of which will pay you back for your efforts.

Scrap Metal Services

Scrap metal services include recycling metal for pay. You would have to get your crew to separate all metal from the rest of the debris in the demolished factory. Place all of the metal in a dumpster, or more preferably, a dump truck or dumpster loader. Load it to the brim, take it to a local scrapyard, and get paid for the pounds or tons you bring into the scrapyard.

Of course, you can also get some money by having a crew come from the scrapyard and assess which items they will and will not take. This tends to be a little more helpful because then you know what you need to look for as you continue demolishing the building. It also reduces the likelihood that you will get paid a lower rate for your scrap metal because you have too much of this metal and not enough of that metal. To get the highest dollar for your scrap, ask the recycling yard what they want and need most and what they are currently paying for those metals.

Find Other Scrapyards That Want or Will Take the Other Scrap

Once you sell the most valuable scraps to the highest bidder, you can sell the rest to other scrapyards that either want and/or need your remaining scrap metal. Usually, one scrap yard has an abundance of pig iron, while another scrap yard has an abundance of aluminum. They are all short some metal type at some point. The trick is to finding out who wants and needs what metals. Then you can get the most money by recycling with different scrapyards for competing prices.

Check With Metal Refineries

If there are metal refineries within your area, bonus! Find out what metals they refine. Most of them tend to focus on iron, steel, titanium, and alloys of value. They will not come down to assess the metal debris in your demolition site, but they will tell you exactly what you have if you bring a load of steel (or other metal) scrap to them. Just look for very specific products made from the type of metal on which the refinery is focused. If you are lucky and find some steel girders or I-beams, that is akin to liquid gold for metal refineries.

Cast Iron Has Value Too

Cast iron stoves and heating components in really old factories have value too. This extremely heavy metal is often cast into large shapes, making it impossible to remove without a construction or a demolition crew's help. Since you are the demolition crew here, you can remove the cast iron components and sent them to smelting factories that want more and more of this metal.

It can be melted down and recast into something else, preventing the over-mining of iron ore used to make cast iron. Because of its weight and sheer density, you can expect to garner some very nice piles of cash for all of the cast iron you find and bring to the iron factories. Think "pot-bellied stove," and you should have no trouble finding cast iron, if it is present in your demolition site.