[Noisebridge-discuss] Tearing apart a bus...

[Sparr]

I will soon be disposing of a not-running-for-much-longer transit bus. Of
course I'll be trying more profitable and less destructive avenues first,
but I'd like some contingency plan if that all falls through.

My next-to-last-resort idea is (myself or someone else) to tear it apart
and scrap / trash / sell the results. At a rough guess, the bus contains 4
tons of aluminum, 8 tons of steel, 1 ton of useful easily resellable
components, and 3 tons of misc garbage. My vague plan is to rent three
dumpsters, a van, and a small parking lot, then attack it with power tools
(of increasing levels of destructiveness) and sort the scrap and garbage
into the dumpsters and the resellable stuff into the van. Then the
dumpsters would go back to their homes, full of scrap, for two of which I'd
be paid and from which I'd pay the rental and hauling fees for the
dumpsters and the disposal fee for the worthless stuff.

Can anyone offer advice on specific approaches to this plan/idea? Are there
better ways to go about turning something that big into as much money as
possible? Are there specific places or services I should use for the sorted
metal piles (storage, hauling, sale)? Any insights would be appreciated.

For reference, a straight up vehicle salvage yard has offered me $150/ton
for the whole bus, which comes out to about $2400. I am pretty sure I can
get that much for just the windows, or just the scrap aluminum, or just the
air conditioner, if I get it all down to manageable chunks.

PS: if you'd be interested in the job of coordinating this operation,
and/or performing the teardown, let me know.

PPS: half the aluminum is going to be in the form of channel extrusion,
like 8020 but a proprietary profile. that could probably go to some project
instead of a scrap yard.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20161019/d6bd06c5/attachment-0002.html>