Listing By State, Is It Hard For You To Aquire WW Lead??

[Ekalb2000]

No problems yet. Sometimes they have them, sometimes they dont. I guess I am a day late when they dont. I have only had to pay for them once. It was twelve bucks for a 5gal bucket at a dedicated tire shop. I have not been back as I have found other (free) places to get them.

[PULSAR]

no problem so far in north carlolna .Buddy on the fire dept works for a gm dealers and his son ,one of my casting buddies gets all our ww free.

[Chapped Lips]

just a quick note....NM...in my area most have re-cycling contracts....a BIG O dealer quoted me $20/ ONE gallon bucket.....a GOODYEAR dealer said he has to research the current going price on lead (anyone have a site so i can verify)....a large independent quoted $50/ 5gallon ....still think'n on that one....i picked a heckuva time to stick my big toe in the melt pot.....

[Jim Sheldon]

All the tire shops in the Wichita, KS area are either re-using the wheel weights they take off the old tires or, in the case of the big name dealers, are required to have a haz-mat company come pick them up. Claim it's an EPA law which ain't true, but they won't budge. WW's are almost impossible to get around here.

Jim

[troy_mclure]

the only wheel weights i get in southern louisania are the ones i pick up off the ground.

they all get recycled to the cactory, or else somebody already has dibs on them.

i have gotten around 8lbs in a year.

theres lots of cas guys around here so they snatch it all up.

[fatelk]

A friend of mine who has been casting a lot longer than I have told me last year that he's never had any trouble getting wheel weights. I told him I was having a terrible time finding any and he shrugged it off. He said he hadn't looked for any for a while, but for all the decades he's been using them he could always get bucketfuls when he needed them.

Recently he saw me after church, and asked me if I had found any ww's lately. He looked rather concerned and said he had gone looking for some expecting hundreds of pounds for cheap, and had struck out. First time ever in decades. He was not happy.

It seems to me that while there may be a few pockets of cheap lead left out there for those of you who are lucky or have connections, for the rest of us cheap lead is a thing of the past. It seems to have gotten exponentially worse in the last few months.

I think around here there must be a lot of reloaders and fishermen who are desperate and paying whatever is asked. That seems to have convinced the tire guys that they have gold. The few shops around here that will even talk to me about selling wheel weight want 75 cents to $1 per pound. They say it with a straight face as if it's the going rate and a very reasonable price.

Are there folks out there that will actually pay a dollar a pound for wheel weights? Are people that desperate?

[Cowboy T]

I think around here there must be a lot of reloaders and fishermen who are desperate and paying whatever is asked. That seems to have convinced the tire guys that they have gold. The few shops around here that will even talk to me about selling wheel weight want 75 cents to $1 per pound. They say it with a straight face as if it's the going rate and a very reasonable price.

Are there folks out there that will actually pay a dollar a pound for wheel weights? Are people that desperate?

I've done it. And a whole lot of other people have done it, too. Why? The OBAMA EFFECT.

The Democracks know we reload and cast. They don't like that we reload and cast. Make lead expensive to get, and you limit the ammo supply. Since even a Liberal like me is aware of this, so are many others. So, we're gettin' ours while the gettin's good!!

Even at those prices, though, it's still a money saver over buying even cast bullets from someone else. And don't even try comparing it to jacketed.

If you're in California, now's the time to buy your lead, even at $1.00/lb, along with some moulds and start castin'. February 2011 is not that far away....

[Crusty Deary Ol'Coot]

Well Cowboy T, I don't know what is happening in Califunnyia in 2011, but except for the used ones coming in on tires, WW are already a thing of the past at tire shops.

My son manages a store for one of the big tire retailers down there, and as of the first of the year, all unopened boxes of WW were picked up, put on pallets and shipped to out of state stores.

Opened boxes along with used WW were sent to the recycler.

Crazy greenies are dumber then a truck load of cement.

Keep em coming!

Crusty Deary Ol'Coot

[high standard 40]

I see a couple of other south Louisiana members here. I have had hit and miss luck here. Chain stores are a waste of time. All state they have recycling contracts. I was in the automotive industry locally here for years so I do have some contacts with many local shops near my home. I started looking hard about 14 months ago and now have more ingots stashed than I am likely to ever use. The most I ever paid was $10 for a 5 gal bucket. Most were no charge. In just the one year of me starting to look, I can see a very large increase in unusable junk in the buckets I am getting now. A lot of steel & zinc and nearly half stick-on in some batches. Though I have plenty on hand, I have not stopped picking up all I can find. I plan to retire in a couple of years an I hope to start shooting a lot more.

[troy_mclure]

I see a couple of other south Louisiana members here. I have had hit and miss luck here. Chain stores are a waste of time. All state they have recycling contracts. I was in the automotive industry locally here for years so I do have some contacts with many local shops near my home. I started looking hard about 14 months ago and now have more ingots stashed than I am likely to ever use. The most I ever paid was $10 for a 5 gal bucket. Most were no charge. In just the one year of me starting to look, I can see a very large increase in unusable junk in the buckets I am getting now. A lot of steel & zinc and nearly half stick-on in some batches. Though I have plenty on hand, I have not stopped picking up all I can find. I plan to retire in a couple of years an I hope to start shooting a lot more.

you are prolly the guy that everybody tells me they are holding them for!

[Bkid]

New Mexico I live in a car culture! tire shops every where. a little beer/$$ and a little spanish and i have all the wheel weights i need. Also two of my former students and one of my current students work in/own tire shops. So after that happened i don't even have to pay. I just bring them donuts or help them with their math work.

Good to know, from a Fellow New Mexican. That works for me.

[wiljen]

Not hard to get here yet (NE TN, SW VA) but getting to see more and more Zn, Iron, and Steel in my buckets. I can see a day coming when we are looking for the few lead ones rather than looking for the ones to cull. I had been getting maybe a handful per bucket of the non-usable kinds. These last buckets probably averaged closer to 5% of the total.

[high standard 40]

you are prolly the guy that everybody tells me they are holding them for!

Where are you located?

[troy_mclure]

houma, but ive tried thibodaux, baton rouge, and Morgan city.

[high standard 40]

Houma......that is the gulf coast, or soon will be. I'm just east of BR.

[JIMinPHX]

Hard to find in Phoenix. Occasionally, I get a few from a tire shop, but not often. The scrap guys charge an arm & a leg for them.

[NewGuy]

I had good luck today. I picked up ~ 3.5 five gallon pails for $90. I had to go to 4 different shops, but it wasn't difficult to find. From what the tire guys were saying, if you are in Wisconsin, you had better get while the gettin' is good. Most said that a switch to steel weights is in the future. Maybe another year or so, from what I heard.

[Aegis]

My part of OH has been dry for awhile. Too many shot makers around.

[jsizemore]

East Central NC. The big tire store chains are under contract for their WW. One told me they get $.05 each. Yikes.

I have three small tire stores I buy from. Also have a recycler that I've bought from for a couple years. He sold me 200lbs of WW for $.15/lb today. He's got another 400lbs in the bin I'll pick up later this week. They also had half a bin of dental x-ray foil. The bins are 3' on a side.

So far, pickin's have been good. At least it's staying ahead of my shooting.

[rtracy2001]

My son manages a store for one of the big tire retailers down there, and as of the first of the year, all unopened boxes of WW were picked up, put on pallets and shipped to out of state stores.

Opened boxes along with used WW were sent to the recycler.

Hmm, I found a place like that, the manager even got upset with me when I said I would buy tires elsewhere if he tried to put steel weights on my truck (they are just too big when balancing 35 inch tires). He didn't have any lead weights to sell or put on my rims, so I went to another shop and got two used tires, and a 5 gallon bucket of weights for <$100.

Since cali whent nuts, all the big chains are following suit (cheaper to stock only one type of weight I guess).