ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Scrapping wire?

I am tired of the pile of wire, mostly 12 Ga NM-B, that has accumulated in my truck. While it is nice to be able to grab a short length and use it for pigtails etc I am thinking it may not be worth the hassle and mess. I called to get scrap pricing and unstripped wire was only about 1/3 the value per pound vs stripped.

I would like to save the resource by recycling but wonder if it is worth it. Does anyone else bother with the smaller gauge wires like this? What about AL SE cable?

Here in chicago we get .70 cents to the pound unstripped. I don't know what its worth by you ,but it's definetly recycling to me.

We accumulated a bunch of aluminum "contaminated" with steel screws, plastic, transistors and such. The scrap yard was not very interested. We ended up giving it to a homeless shelter type place that had the unskilled labor to clean it up.
They ended up with $100 or so out of it from what we heard.

here in north east wis area the scrap wire for copper useally about little over a buck per pound stripped but unstripped it about 60~80 cent per pound depending on where ya send it.

alum wires it for unstripped useally 25 cent or 35 cent somewhere between two and for stripped alum wires it fetch much higher price near 60 cent some case it can hit a buck per pound


P.S. some salvage yard will classify the scrap wires by size like #12 or smaller for one pile and second pile for #10 or larger depending on number of strands there

Merci, Marc

I don't think scrap aluminum gas recovered from hurricane Charley yet here. It was down to a quarter a pound for most of the year. The yards were piled 30 feet over the fence with screen cage and pan roof metal.

Scrap yards are the place to buy new wire around here. It is about half the price of the big box stores. There are always big carts of full spools. I don't know how much the NEC makes you derate it if you know it was "hot".