454PB
01-19-2007, 01:29 AM
I took a tire into a mom and pop tire shop that I've used for years to get a slow leak repaired. I've been getting paranoid reading all the posts scattered across cyber space concerning the availability of lead, wheelweights in particular. During my BS session with the owner, I asked him if he had any used wheelweights. He hesitated a second, then said "how many do you want?". I replied that a couple of 5 gallon buckets would hold me a while. He then wanted to know what I was going to do with them, so I told him that I make bullets from them. Here in Montana, you don't usually have to worry about being a "gun nut", because most people are raised around guns, shooting, and hunting. He then asked a lot of questions about how many WW I go through. I was honest with him and told him that the scrap metal prices have sky rocketed, he was honest with me and said he knew that, that's why he was holding on to his pile of used WW, and that he had twenty 5 gallon buckets in the back room. He didn't really want to quote me a price, so I told him I'm acquinted with the manager of the only metal recycling business in our town, and that they were only paying 3 cents a pound for scrap lead, and selling it for 30 cents a pound the last time I checked. He got on the phone and called the recycler, and was quoted 5 cents a pound. This seemed to tick him off, and I told him that this same recycler bought scrap steel for a penny a pound, but sold anything picked out of that pile for 20 times that amount. He agreed to sell me two buckets for $20, then helped me load the buckets into the back of my truck. He said he'd much rather sell them to someone that was actually going to use them, rather than someone that was going to resell them. I unloaded them when I got home and weighed the haul, it was 321 pounds.
Just goes to show that it never hurts to ask, and the smaller shops seem more likely to keep them around.
Just goes to show that it never hurts to ask, and the smaller shops seem more likely to keep them around.