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#1
posted to rec.boats
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Trade agreements
On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:51:43 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote: I vaguely recall my dad saying the scrap he sold to the local guy ended up in Pittsburgh. This was in the 1950s and 1960s and early 1970s. When my dad died, the boat store had, literally, hundreds of parts bins where new parts for engines dating back to the late 1940s were kept. Mostly metal parts, but some electrical, some rubber, et cetera. A friend of the family who was the owner of a New England boat accessories and parts operation arranged for the sale of all this stuff to a handful of active boat dealers in Connecticut and Rhode Island and my mother ended up with a substantial check as the proceeds. Too bad there was no eBay back then! That was still when they made steel in Pittsburgh. |
#2
posted to rec.boats
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Trade agreements
On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 13:05:38 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote: On 10/15/15 12:49 PM, Califbill wrote: Mr. Luddite wrote: I watched a report on MSNBC earlier today that blew my mind. It focused on a port in California that handles 40 percent of our import and export shipments to and from China. First item of surprise: 60 percent of the containers loaded with merchandise imported from China are returned to China ... empty. But the biggest surprise is what we are exporting *to* China in huge qualities. Trash. The report showed mountains of recyclable plastic bottles, cardboard, scrap metal and other trash items that are loaded up and set to China. China's workers recycle it, making insulated clothing items from the plastic bottles and cardboard and items like smartphones from the scrap aluminum and metals, then ship them back to the USA for sale back to us. Back in the 50's we loaded our scrap steel on scrap ships, and they towed them to Japan for processing. I guess we are to expensive to do do any real labor. My dad's company did a lot of the work of cutting huge holes in the decks of ships, which was filled with scrap and then welding the deck section back in. As well,as welding the rudder straight and the prop shaft from turning. Seems as will be even better economically for other countries if we keep raising minimum wages. We always had three small "dumpster" like containers behind the boat shop, one for iron and steel, one for aluminum, and one for brass-bronze-copper, and these were for the busted parts of boats, motors, scooters, trailers, et cetera, and were "saved" for the monthly pickup by a local scrap dealer, who would take them to his yard and then send my dad a check for whatever the agreed-upon value per pound was. These weren't the huge dumpsters you see nowadays, but maybe a third as big. Pistons, blocks, drive shafts, broken "pot metal", busted props not worth repairing, fasteners, control wires stripped out of their covers, busted wheels. In those days, the scrap metal was then loaded onto rail cars and shipped off to smelters in the USA to be reprocessed for materials for new parts "made in the USA." I'm sure some of it was also shipped to foreign countries. I talked to one of the scrappers here and he said most of the sorted scrap metal gets used in the US but mixed scrap is exported I don't know how much that is actually true and whether it is just the local disposition but it sounds reasonable. He gets the whole family around and they take stuff like white goods apart, separating as much of the high value stuff out as they can for the best price. He said they could strip a washing machine down in 10 minutes, taking the motors and solenoids apart for the copper, separating the aluminum from the steel and getting rid of all the plastic. Most of it was just working with a screw gun. |
#3
posted to rec.boats
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Trade agreements
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#4
posted to rec.boats
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Trade agreements
Now metals are fed into huge shredders to fill export containers
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lXfitusZ9qY |
#5
posted to rec.boats
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Trade agreements
On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 12:11:00 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote: But the biggest surprise is what we are exporting *to* China in huge qualities. Trash. === It's good to know we still produce something of value. - Better for it to go back to China in an otherwise empty container rather than end up in a landfill here don't you think? |
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