A few years back when scrap prices were up, my brother and I drove around town with a 30ft flatbed and loaded discarded fridges and washing machines by hand. You ever smelled a fridge that's been left in an alley for weeks without being emptied? Well, try a washing machine... When we got home, we loaded all the odd scrap we'd been saving for years too. It's a good hour drive to the scrap yard, so got to make it worth it. When all was said and done, we pulled in with a little over 10,000lbs of metal. We got paid around $400. Granted, we didn't have no retirement account pulling its share out of that, but split between the two of us and the truck (that's got to eat too), we didn't feel too bad about it. I don't care if they take half of my starting pay, you better believe I'll be working my ass off to please these folks.