Scrap prices move weekly, so we do not publish a range: the yard's board on the day is the price, and any figure older than that is worse than none. What is stable is the counter itself. In many states the yard is legally required to photograph you, copy your ID, record the plate you arrived in and report the transaction to police, sometimes within 24 hours, and to pay you by mailed check rather than cash for the metals thieves take.
A scrap metal recycler buys metal by weight, sorts it, processes it into grades a mill can melt, and sells it on. Ferrous is anything a magnet sticks to, which is most of a car body and most structural steel. Nonferrous covers copper, aluminum, brass, lead and the rest, and it is worth far more per pound.
That price gap is why the counter is regulated the way it is. Copper wire pulled out of a building site, aluminum irrigation pipe and catalytic converters cut off parked cars are stolen precisely because a yard will pay for them, and states responded by making the yard the checkpoint.
In states with recording statutes the yard writes down more about you than a bank teller would. Government photo ID copied, a physical description, your address and date of birth, a photograph or video of you at the counter, and the plate number of whatever you drove in.
Payment is often the part that surprises people. Several states restrict cash for exactly the metals thieves take, and require a check mailed to a verified address instead. Some add a holding period: the yard has to keep the material intact, unflattened and uncut, for a set number of days so a police officer can identify it if it turns up on a stolen property report.
Catalytic converters get their own treatment, and it goes further than paperwork. Arizona bans a scrap dealer from buying one from a member of the public at all.
State law, mostly, and sometimes city ordinance on top of it. Federal law's clearest contribution runs the other way: 40 C.F.R. 261.4(a)(13) excludes recycled scrap metal from hazardous waste regulation under RCRA, which is what makes yard-scale processing workable in the first place.
We looked for an enacted federal statute governing scrap transaction records and did not find one. What surfaced was bills, several of them, going back to 2008. That is a gap in our research rather than a finding about federal law, and we would rather say so than round it off.
Requirements differ enough between states that a national summary would mislead. The state pages carry the actual sections.
Call for today's price before you load, and ask for it by grade rather than by metal. "Copper" is not a price; bare bright, number one, number two and insulated wire are four different prices, and how a yard grades your load is where most of the disagreement happens.
Ask how they weigh and whether the scale is certified. A certified scale is a public record in most states.
Ask about deductions before you tip the trailer. Contamination, attached non-metal and moisture all come off the weight, and the deduction is much easier to discuss before the load is on the ground than after.
Ask how and when you get paid. If the metal is on your state's restricted list, the answer may be a check in the post rather than cash at the window, and that is the law rather than the yard being difficult.
Bring the ID you would bring to a bank. In a recording state the transaction cannot legally proceed without it.
It changes weekly, which is why we do not publish a figure. Call for the yard's price on the day and ask for it by grade rather than by metal: bare bright copper, number one, number two and insulated wire are four different prices, and grading is where most disputes start.
Because in states with recording statutes it is legally required to collect them. That commonly means a copy of government photo ID, a physical description, your address and date of birth, a photograph or video of you at the counter, and the plate of the vehicle you arrived in. Some states also require the transaction to be reported to police within 24 hours.
Several states restrict cash payment for exactly the metals that get stolen, and require a check mailed to a verified address instead. Some also require the yard to hold the material intact for a set number of days so it can be identified if it turns up on a stolen property report. That is state law, not the yard's policy.
In some states, no. Arizona bans a scrap dealer from buying one from a member of the public outright, with narrow exceptions for industrial accounts, other dealers and metal released by a peace officer. Check the state page before you drive anywhere with one.