Great article about a starting business, this is how most scrap businesses, including mine, started.
Extract from the Article:
Oct. 28--YOUNGSTOWN
At a house on Lockwood Boulevard, in a small garage just off the living room, motors are yanked from refrigerators and wires are stripped down to the precious light copper waiting underneath rubber and insulation.
A profit is turned with one small part or by one old rusting appliance at a time.
Dim lights flicker over Michael Kohuth, 20, and Michael Kosach, 19, as they work to build a business from the ground up with their truck, their hands and the word-of-mouth referrals that have thus far given them a running start.
Kohuth and Kosach, both graduates of Boardman High School, have jumped into the country's $100 billion scrap-metal industry, one that employs 137,000 Americans and indirectly supports another 450,000 jobs across the country.
Metal recycling has been around for thousands of years, but with a boom in overseas construction and a dearth of raw materials, prices for scrap metal have surged in recent years, opening a window for guys such as Kohuth and Kosach to make either a simple living or a fortune, depending on how they approach their new profession.
The Boardman natives are known as "peddlers" to industry insiders. They have just one role in an industry with a long line of duties, from the traders on the London Metal Exchange or the New York Mercantile Exchange who set scrap prices by the minute, or the smelters who melt down the junk metal so that manufacturers can turn what were once useless heaps of metal into high-grade raw material with countless applications.
Back in June, Kohuth and Kosach, acting on years of recreational scrapping, decided to start Iron Man Recycling and extend their services, free of charge, to residents and businesses throughout Mahoning County.
The two will pick up almost anything, from an old dryer taking up space in the basement, to a car overrun by tall grass in the back yard. After loading it on their truck, the two will take it to one of several area metal recycling yards for a small or large profit, depending on whatever they haul in a given day.
