It was the second slab of metal to get hurled from the oversized, metal construction dumpster. Before it even hit asphalt, I realized my mistake. It was headed straight towards my friend’s leg. Instantaneously I cringed and winced, as I was surely sympathetically feeling the pain I had just caused. After mumbling a few four letter words under her breath to describe me, she was back at it. We had our work cut out for us.
Today’s job at hand called for a special type of person. One that is hardworking, kind, and lacking in any sense of self-esteem or dignity whatsoever. Today we were dumpster diving. Several weeks prior I had noticed a local store was having a going out of business sell-off. I made inquiry with the manager, a friend of mine, about what was to become of all the store fixtures. I was in the market for these shelves and displays for the new kayak shop, yet wished to use as much recycled stuff in the outfitting of our store. The manager told me to show up on Monday, because this is when the store was officially closed for good. He assured me that they would have some stuff to donate (We call this Habitat for Dave, rather than Habitat for Humanity– Have you scheduled your volunteer work day or material donation yet?)
Monday arrived, as did our twenty-two foot enclosed trailer which we emptied of boats to put into service for moving some store furnishings. They were really good to us, loading me up with glass showcases, wooden shelves, hat racks, and much more. On top of this, they offered to let me come back later in the week, at which point they would have all the merchandise removed from the rows of steel shelving. This too, would soon be mine for the taking.
As promised, I showed up later that week ready to haul off the donation. To my surprise, the store was already completely emptied out, with not a soul in sight. WHAT!!! Luckily, I remembered the manager speaking of a huge roll-off construction dumpster being delivered to the back alley of the strip mall where the store was located. One quick check of this semi trailer sized refuse bin confirmed my suspicions. All the metal shelves were now swimming in a medley of debris which included rotting, leftover lunch parts and all sorts of other garbage. One scan of the bin indicated that nearly the entire contents was metal shelving material and the needed supports.
As always, my schedule was hectic, and the task at hand large. I would only have about two hours free the next day to try and go salvage some of these. To wait until later would mean risking the dumpster along with the shelves getting picked up and taken to the dump where they would ultimately be discarded. The environmentalist in me was alone enough to try and prevent this from happening.
Instantly, I knew that I had but one option available to pull this off. Without hesitation, I made the call to my lifeline, Delilah Smith. (We had to come up with fake names for the somewhat covert operation which we were about to undertake.) Now folks, it takes a pretty darn special lady to agree to go dumpster diving on her day off. Today, ungodly temperatures would make this all the more true. It was 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity in the shade. … and believe, me we never were in the shade. I questioned Delilah as to if she had slathered on plenty of sunscreen. “We are not going to be out here that long are we?” I tried not to grin as I assured her that this shouldn’t take that long. Little did she know that I had purposely blocked her vehicle in with my own oversized truck and trailer. She was not leaving until I was good and ready for her to do so!
I would be the first to scale my way onto the top of the giant heap of metal. We agreed that I would throw the shelves off the dumpster, at which point Delilah would load these into my trailer. A few of the shelves on top had obvious damage, which I assumed happened when the forklift was used to squash down the contents of the dumpster to allow for more room. We peeled back layer after layer of these bent shelves, knowing that untarnished ones were surely right below. A monstrous pile of bent shelving was amassing beside the dumpster. I instructed my helper to go ahead and load these as well. She looked at me questionably as if the heat had surely gone to my brain. “That is pure treasure girl,” I assured her. Metal, Metal, Metal. Worth its weight in, well, steel??? The steel shelving supports alone, weighed a ton. “With the amount of metal in this dumpster, I bet there is a thousand dollars in here,” I assured her. She still looked skeptical.
The forays of throwing off the bent shelving continued. At this point, we had been at this for some time. The metal was so hot from the sweltering sun, that oven mitts truly would have come in handy to grab onto these. Both of us had a literal coating of white salt on our faces from the profuse quantities of sweat. I sent Delilah to the nearby 7-11 to grab us some drinks. Much to my surprise, she returned! Shortly thereafter, out of guilt, I sent her home. I would have to try and make the mangled metal mountain fit inside the trailer on my own. Away she went, with me still promising her that the kind of cash this would bring at the recyclers would make it more than worth all this.
Albeit a lot of metal that we were hauling off, we only barely scratched the surface compared to what was still landfill bound. Of the hundreds of pieces of shelving, we were unable to find one single piece which was not dented. I think the liquidators got in a hurry to get out of there and in fact used to forklift to disassembled the shelves rather than take the time to take them apart by hand. I still held to the consolation that this would all be worth it, because I would receive enough money to go buy my own shelves with the recycling proceeds.
Here is how things turned out. Delilah got a huge bruise on her leg from the flying chunk of steel. I got a puncture wound on my calf from another rogue piece of iron. We surely both suffered from sunburn and dehydration. …..but what about that cash?
Saturday morning I took the full trailer of metal to the recyclers. It was so heavy that even my unstoppable diesel truck was groaning from the massive load. I pulled onto the scale where a tare weight would be recorded. The guy at the scrapyard queried, “Watcha got?” “Steel shelving,’ I replied with a bit of a grin. “I think that is what we call tin,” he responded. “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.” This was far too much work to be told that this was the much less valuable tin, rather than steel. I could have cried, because I still had to offload the stuff to regain the use of my kayak trailer.
It would take me another couple of hours out of my busy day to discard this “junk” in the scrap heap. With my head hung low, and a crick in my back, I drove back to the scale hoping that I did not get a flat tire from all the random sharp objects which are inherent of scrapyard roads. The scale got its reading, and I went into the office to get my money. The attendant handed me the little yellow slip with the total weight of the shelves. 2 5 2 0 That is right, two thousand five hundred twenty pounds. Right beside the weight was a price per pound. 2520 @ $4 FOUR DOLLARS PER POUND. THAT IS RIGHT DELILAH, OVER ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Right as I began to celebrate, I saw a dead car being drug across the scale outside the office. Curiosity got the best of me, so I asked the attendant how much a car like that brings on average. “About a hundred dollars at four dollars per hundred.” Huh??? HUH??? HUH????? Four dollars per hundred! I received my $105 and left. Good grief this was a lot of work for one hundred dollars. Now, I would have to probably take Delilah to dinner for her help which would probably take about half of this. The other half barely covered my fuel and antibiotic salve for the puncture wound.
What I did get out of this (besides a heck of a story), was a real eye opening look at what nice friends I have. As I stated in the beginning of this email, it is some kind of person to have been out there under these sort of circumstances. I knew that no matter the value of the treasures we pulled out of the trash heap, the real treasure was the friendship this person was offering me.
Who would you dig through the dumpster for?
