End of an Era

[Rottweiler]

Yesterday I stopped at my favorite tire shop/wheelweight supplier with my usual donation of a big box of donuts to trade for the wheelweights. I was informed that this would be the last time they would be able to give up the wheelweights in exchange for donuts. Apparently SOME JACKA$$ offered the boss $25.00 dollars for a 5 gallon bucket. The precedent has now been set, but they did honor our agreement one last time. I got all they had for the box of donuts. All they had amounted to 5 buckets, about my usual take.

If you're the guy who recently offered a tire shop owner in Texas 25 bux for a bucket of wheelweights.... THANKS JACKA$$. You screwed up what was the best wheelweight deal in Texas

This is what a box of of donuts used to get me 4-5 times a year. I'm sure you got MUCH less for 25 bux

[kenjuudo]

Almost as bad as getting a guy started casting and he thanks ya by hitting all your spots weekly and cuts ya off at the knees.

jim

[targetshootr]

I'm trying to find the guy who's been telling local tire places he's making fishing sinkers. No way is he selling that many or using that many.

[Springfield]

Well that really sucks. I used to have 3 stations giving me free weights but 2 of them started giving them to the battery company as part of some coporate arrangement. I keep waiting for the last one to bail on me. Looks like you have a decent stockpile there in the background. Seems like the more we get the more we want to stockpile. I wouldn't give up on that station yet, maybe the guy will get a few hundred pounds and his wife wil tell him to knock if off and you can start again. May have to pay some real money, though.

[ktw]

I'm trying to find the guy who's been telling local tire places he's making fishing sinkers. No way is he selling that many or using that many.

Up here we have a sport fishery for Lake Trout/Salmon on the Great Lakes. It can be tough to get wheelweights in the late winter/early spring because the sport fishermen are busy scarfing them up for making their own downrigger cannonballs. Those things can weigh 8-10lbs apiece.

The saddest cases involve visiting a radiator shop only to learn that someone already took all that 60/40 and turned it into fishing sinkers and downrigger cannonballs.

-ktw

[jhalcott]

A LOT of the shops around here have to send the old ww back to either the battery company or the ww suppliers. I COULD get a recyclers license and fill out a bunch of paper work for them. I am not sure if they will pay me to take them or I have to pay them! Either way MY bad back says no way!

[Ken O]

Same thing here, I stopped in to very rural tire shop that has kept me supplied for years. I always gave $10, and thats when they were real glad just to get rid of them. Last week I went in and the guys say it will be fifty cents a pound! He claimed that was what a recycler offered him. I was real bummed, I told him it was for bullets for just myself, and I was not reselling anything. He was actually kind of rude about it, like I had been ripping him off for a long time. Its getting rougher all the time, another shop wants $30 a five gallon bucket. I'm running out of options.

[Jim]

Man, you guys make me feel bad. I just made arrangements with 2 places to keep WWs for me at the rate of $10 a bucket and I'm glad to give 'em that. Then, Monday, a guy at work brought me a coupla hunnerd lbs. of pure sheet lead out of a X-ray room in a hospital.

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

yeah, used to get a bucket full (could hardly carry it) for $10...went to $15...and now he's talking like he needs to raise it to $20. I told him that was more than I was paying at the two other places, and did he have a cash offer that big? He tells me no, just keeping up with inflation. I got two buckets Monday, and that will probably be that there...I'll stop by in six months and see how his big bucks deal is working out, or not.

Rich
DRSS

[MakeMineA10mm]

I never mind paying some for buckets of WWs.

I usually gave $10-$15 (depending on how much junk I saw in the bucket, or how hard-nosed the manager was) per FULL 5-gallon bucket back in the mid-90s. 120lbs raw usually refined to about 70 lbs of clean WW metal. Adding in 2% tin that cost about $1/lb back then, brought my alloy cost to about $.23/lb. That was about 1/2 of what a foundry in Chicago would sell me "Magnum" bullet alloy for. (Of course, the Magnum alloy was clean, from a foundry, and had a good 2% more antimony, but I had to deal with shipping or picking it up in 1-ton lots...)

Nowadays, around here, most places are getting $25/bucket, which I think is damn-near robbery. I haven't priced foundry alloy in over 10 years (still have about 2 tons of WWs that we picked up over the years), but I'm guessing that $25/bucket is still a "deal" compared to the foundry...

Considering the "Haz-Mat" issue, the deals battery companies have, and plain old demand, as much as $25/bucket makes me choke up, it probably is reasonable...

[BigSlick]

Well, it sure wasn't me ;)

I'll look all over the place for ww's but don't venture too far south of Waco.

I've also had someone come in behind me and mess up a deal for me. This being said, I think I've got the goods ahead of the 'regular' guy a couple of times over the last year or so too. Not intentionally, it just happened that way.

Most things like this happen because of the lack of ethics of tire shop owners (in this area anyway). I've actually left new 5 gallon buckets with my phone number on them and had the tire shop sell them buckets and all to the next guy that walked in the door.

Keep hustling, you'll find another source.

It's a jungle out there.
________
CAT WHEEL (http://www.catwheelcompany.com/)

[Bret4207]

Junkyards boys, junkyards!

[Ron.D]

The other day, I thought it was getting time to call around to my local WW sources to see who had some. I know all metal prices have gone nuts in the last 2 yrs. so I gave the local scrap metal dealer a call and asked what they were paying for WW's. .40 a lb. C$. That's about .35 a lb. U.S. or about $40.00 a bucket any time they want to bring it in. I think the days of WW's for donuts are at an end. If you can still get away with it, keep it under your hat. Ron.D

[dnepr]

I get a few fishermen wonder into the shop trying to score the wheelweights but as I am a mechanic there I get them . I thought of sharing for a bit because the shop produces more wheelweights than I am likely to cast and shoot but I am stockpiling them for now because my boss would sell them to a recycler if he can make a buck. Reading about guys loosing their sources makes me glad about my captive supply. I am also glad that I don't have to wreslte 100 lbs pails I take them home when they hit about 30 lbs . I have never checked out any other shops as a source but with the recyclers getting into the game Maybe I should see what is out there to further build my stockpile.

[686]

stoped by a junk yard today where i had been paying .12 lb. there is a new person making shot to sale. he just messed it up. said he pay .20 lb for all they get in. always some one under cut or inflate prices. i did make 2 more stops. got 300 lbs. now i am going to try to get all i can incase it dries up.

[Andy_P]

I'm not one to feed hysteria, but as things change, so I think has our access to cheap WW. With the price of metals increasing, no-one can blame the garages for expecting market value for what is becoming a valuable commodity. Further, as much as it might be "junk science", fear of lead is diminishing its use, and hence opportunities for salvage.

So I am always on the lookout for it and am stockpiling it. I don't know how much is a "lifetime supply", but I don't see "too much" as a problem. I don't mind paying $0.15-0.25/lb for raw WW, as that still gets me bullets for less than a nickel a piece, and a whole lot of entertainment.

I think that the good old days of plentiful free or at least cheap WW are over. On the bright side, we have far better access to good information and networking than we ever did, and equipment is far better, more plentiful and relatively inexpensive compared to the old days.

[Bret4207]

What you guys need to do is get the goods on your supplier. Like photo's of him and his sister in law in a compromising situation or maybe him and his goat or him and Hillary, same thing. Then you'll have the supply locked until he gets YOU!

[piwo]

Try and appeal to their sense of patriotism. You're making boolits with them like his ancestors did, and the other guy is selling them for the Chinese Communists to further build their economy and destroy ours ..... :-D :Fire:

Who know, only has to work once..:wink:

[Baron von Trollwhack]

Darn condors are even scavenging lead in local gutpiles. It's getting bad I tell you!

[9.3X62AL]

The ducks started it. Can't trust a mallard, or a pintail. Even the teal (strict vegetarians) bear close watching.