How Much Is My Car Worth In Scrap?

Posted On Jul 24 2019
scrap cars

If your car is strictly at the end stage of its valuable life, you might be moving around from one junkyard to another to get a few quotes. Of course, you may also be curious to know about the current scrap auto rates in the market.

Whether you sell your scrap cars to wrecking yard contact Sydney Car Removals, However, the auto recycling process is very straightforward as some of the metals can be used in new automobiles.

Metal prices – How they affect the selling of your vehicle for scrap?

When you decide it’s time to scrap the damaged or broken-down vehicle, the odds are that you are hoping for, making a little bit of money out of it. However, the amount of cash you can get for your scrap vehicle fluctuates widely, in contrast to the prices of used cars, which only varies a few per cent up or down during the year.

Why is it so?

If you want to know why old car prices fluctuate that way, you need to understand where the value comes in for a vehicle at each stage of its lifecycle. A used vehicle is still a vehicle. However, at least it is still driveable.

  • On the other hand, a newer or unique, damaged or broken-down automobile can be repaired, to regain some value and utility whether it is a more modern, low-mileage or worth having a car.
  • It will still have good value in its parts even if it is totalled. It is just a calculation. According to experts in the automotive industry, a damaged automobile with proper mechanics and a broken-down vehicle with bad mechanics is equal to one right vehicle that is driveable.
  • The common thing in all of the above situations is that these automobiles are worth even more than the essential cost of their components, or at least what their parts are made of.

However, if you have an old automobile that is not exotic or rare, has high mileage and whose mechanic and structure are shot, it may have little or no worth as a vehicle. Also, this where automotive recycle comes into play, as it’s only indeed worth the metals it consists of.

How to determine the scrap cars prices?

scrap car removals

The value of scrap cars is intrinsic to the price of metals. It is made up of. When reaching the scrap stage, a vehicle stop competing with other automobiles for dollars, now it’s worth is based on the current prices of metals. Also, because metals are commodities, its prices go up and down daily, sometimes they fluctuate by massive amounts. Wreckers offer instant cash for the truck based on the current market metal price in that case.

Remember, your vehicle is not only made up of steel, but it also has other valuable metals too. These include copper, iron and aluminium.

How they affect?

We assume that you have a machine and it has one metric ton of scrap vehicle steel, which value is $185. Your 327-pounds of aluminium at the rate of $0.65 per pound will sum up to $190 if add in another $100 for some of the other recyclable components such as a little bit of platinum in the catalytic converter and the lead in the battery.

A completely average, not-roadworthy scrap cars have a scrap value of about $485 according to its weight. However, that’s just the value of the scrap metals it composed of and excludes the labour or other costs that are involved in recycling the car.

If your car is non-running, it needs to be towed to the salvage yard, which will cost around $100. After this, you need to pull off all the things that are not recyclable and needs to be disposed of. For example, carpet, lights, interior, fluids and plastic trim. However, make sure to separate the metals first. At last, you can shred the body and frame into a useful bit of steel.

Why scrap metal prices are changing so rapidly?

Now, this is a question whose answer lies in the intricacies of global economics. At the beginning of the 2010s, some countries, particularly China, were using much steel for manufacturing materials.

Therefore, the international demand for scrap steel was high. It was so high that the production was out-pacing, which leads to record high steel prices for scrap steel as well as a billet.

Lately, the demand for steel has reduced dramatically. When China was trading in vast amounts of billet steel, countries like Turkey were purchased most of the scrap steel which was coming out of the US. Currently, China is still manufacturing steel in massive amounts.

Steel and oil boom or bust together

The oil industry is one of the great users of a large amount of steel. Thus, when the prices of oil are at their peak, the rates of steel eventually go higher. This relationship causes a slight rebound in steel prices. The US oil and gas production is rising because of the enormous oil fields in the Dakotas and other areas around the country.

It was quite detailed for the regular cars removal readers, but I hope that it helps.

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