I'd say there's more money made off of junk than about any business going right now.
I mean you have no tobacco, nothing left in Kentucky except junk, and right now the
junk in the timber is probably the two main sources in Kentucky.
This is a junk that has been up for about a year straight ever since that reactor mis-happened
with China, Japan, ever since that happened, junk prices have sky-drupled.
People have gone in to try to take the wire off of these communication towers or sub-panels
or sub-plants, and they get their lives laid up.
Well the junkyard man has good times, well the poor man has hard times, well the transmissions,
the money on an oil pan needs a T-bone steak for the junk man, the junk man, the junk man.
When the people get the blues he gets a new pair of shoes, but the poor man, he's all
the junk playing, the recession hits him hard and it's back to the old junkyard.
Well there's transmission fluid in the bear dirt, in the backseat window there's a dirty
shirt, we turn up in the wheel well, sip crush every thing that he can't say.
Okay what got you into doing it?
Well I guess it's more than ten years.
So one day you just realized it thought it would be a good idea?
I got started with selling junk car parts, wreck auto salvage.
Like somebody you knew was doing that or you just kind of?
I had about a record when we started the junkyard and then quit doing that and just started
gathering junk up and selling it.
It's a lot of work to drag it out and load it and coat it up.
To find it, it's not really all that hard to find it, it's just a lot of moving around
and looking.
Anything that's metal you can junk.
I prefer heavy stuff like car frames and trailer frames, whole cars but anything, stoves, refrigerators
it don't matter.
Yeah, you know one thing about junking though it's actually cleaning up a lot of the countryside.
Oh yeah.
People don't think about that like old school buses and stuff.
Yeah, I actually cut one of those up.
Is that quite the process?
That's quite the process, I still ain't got it all cut up.
Talk about it.
How did you take the glass out of it?
Well, I used a saw saw and a big gas powered rock saw and a wrecker and we turned it over
and started sawing the sheet metal off of it and then got under it and I'm bolted the
floor and separated it from the frame and cut that up.
No, if you do, if you can get enough metal you can make $2,000, $3,000 a week sometimes
but then sometimes you go a week or two and you don't make but a few hundred.
You think you're going to be a millionaire if I'm doing it?
Not just selling it.
If you could buy it, if I started buying it and getting the scale in then I could probably
make a million dollars doing it.
Everybody knows that the junk's a high, people stealing it, stealing copper from people, our
conditioners, they don't just give it away anymore.
Used to be it wasn't worth a whole lot.
You had to have a whole bunch of it to be worth anything.
Now, you don't have to have a whole lot of it to be worth that much.
A five gallon bucket full of copper wire is worth 150 bucks.
We're kind of like pawn shops.
It's scrap business everywhere, not just Kentucky.
It just has the stigma attached to it that we're receiving a lot of stolen property,
which we do receive stolen property but it's maybe one percent or less than one percent
of our business.
It's unfortunate that there's a lot of people out here trying to make a living, trying to
live a, do the right thing and to all of us has been attached this stigma of we're just
out trying to make a dollar off someone's stolen air conditioner or some stolen copper.
A lot of the times it's obvious and unfortunately when it's obvious, you still call it police.
I don't know how many times I've called the police and I'm like, do you have a report
for a stolen, say, roll of copper wire?
It looks like it's brand new and no, we don't have any reports and yes, the guy where they
got it from and they're like, well, I took that out of my grandfather's barn.
Here in Kentucky, if you have a grandfather's barn, the majority of stolen stuff is coming
out of your grandfather's barn, it seems like.
You call the police, they say there's nothing reported, so you kind of got to ask yourself,
do you want to tell that customer, no, we're not going to take it because you're suspicious
and then you run the risk of offending someone if it's legitimate or you run the risk of
buying something and then it gets reported a week down the road and you're out that money
when you give it back.
Lots of scrap are never really discussed, but just the amount of energy saved by recycling
aluminum cans is enormous.
We talk about coal here in Kentucky, trying to go green.
I think probably the most widespread green movement in Kentucky people don't even realize
is all these people that are picking up scrap metal.
It saves a ton of money, it's a lot easier to refine metals from their previously refined
state as from a ore out of a mountainside or something like that.
It's better for the environment, there's a lot of benefits to it.
They say we're stealing copper from a cell phone tower, a maintenance worker for this
tower on Waller Avenue got an alarm at about two this morning, officers found someone had
broken into the tower and left their tools nearby on the railroad tracks.
About 15 minutes later they found their suspect, 29-year-old Joseph Hall.
They say they found a bag of tools and about 80 pounds of copper near the tower.
Hall was arrested for trespassing, this isn't the first time the tower's been hit.
Back in March, officers spotted a suspect running from the tower with pieces of copper
left behind.
No word if the two break-ins are connected.
If I put all this energy into stealing this stuff as opposed to maybe getting a part-time
job or some of the kind of employment, there's a lot of jobs out there that people can get
but they're reluctant to do so because they don't feel that they get enough monies from
that.
So they're more than happy to stay home and collect some kind of benefit check and just
go out and cause damage to other people's property who are working very hard.
Two things that I've seen is wire from telephone companies.
My experience, for example, in Powell County, they had access to an area that the wires
were hanging down low.
So they cut more than 300 feet of wire.
Well, that costs thousands of dollars to replace well over 300 feet of wire but they're only
going to get maybe 20 bucks out of the wire.
They got to meld everything down and get the copper and then take it in there.
Well, of course, the other thing too was copper wires from residents, a lot of the air conditioning
units.
They went in and destroyed the homes just from taking the copper from there, of course.
Now it's going to be the homeowner's insurance policy going to take care of all that.
Their rates are going to go up.
And then I've seen homes where, let's say you have a home that you have for sale and
it's a secondary home.
Well, obviously you can't spend 24-7 there and people have gone in and identified that
and they destroyed the house.
They simply go in there and pull the outlet out, find a couple of wires and then just
pull it up through the sheetrock, which causes thousands of thousands because now you're
not only looking at replacing the wire but you've got to replace all the sheetrock, any
kind of insulation damaging, if it affected any other kind of utilities within the residence.
If it goes to the ceiling that affect the attic in some way, I've seen them take out
breaker boxes in the house where they literally took out the entire panel, electrical panel
out of the house, just to get a little bit of the copper wire and to replace a whole
electrical panel.
And we're not talking about just removing it from the wall, we're talking about damaging
to removing it.
That costs a lot of money to replace that.
Okay.
There's a line told Stagley, please don't take my life
I got two little babies and a darling and a loving wife
That bad man, oh cruel Stagley
I got two little babies and a darling and a loving wife
I got two little babies and a darling and a loving wife
Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm
Boom, boom, boom, boom, when a party's full
But when a spy builds a line, he's lying down on the floor
That bad man, oh, cruise, staggerly
Youngers off the jury, what you think of that?
Staggerly killed in July by the fire-dark stuttered hand
That bad man, oh, cruise, staggerly
Standing on the galler's head with a pie
At twelve o'clock they killed him
He's all glad to see him die
That bad man, oh, cruise, staggerly
There's some people that, like, just depends
If I don't, I'm pretty good
And if I want to go ask someone, like, hey, are you gonna
Just let that sit there and rock
Or I can haunt for you for free
But what's what a lot of people actually do
Is, like, I've seen on Facebook
On the, like, there's a trading post
And people would say, um, from here and so and so
There's no washer or fridge or something
You want to come get it and haunt off for free
So if you have the equipment and, like, that big truck
Or people would help you, I mean, it's, to me, it's worth it
And instead of letting, instead of burying it on the ground
And polluting it and just, you know, the bad stuff
Going on the ground, I actually recycle it
Instead of having to make new stuff
People will give me stuff and if I have a time
And, I mean, there's been times that I've said
I've not got paid and I've had to, like, need gas
Or if I just need some extra running money
I'll go get a hundred dollars
And it'll pay for my gas
Or if it'll buy me clothes or something that I need
Cause I don't like spending my money wisely
If I don't need it, then I'll buy it
But if I have the money to buy it and I need it, then I'll go get it
Well, there's a lot of people that, that's the reason why
All the laws have been passed
Cause there's a lot of just people that will just go steal stuff
Run around and get scrap metal from car lots
And body shots and take it down here to McDaniels
And sell it for money
And just try to do it every day
But it's getting low and scarce on finding metal
So I'll make pretty decent money
If I got a lot of it or heavy weight there
I'll make it off of it
He went down when the recession started
They was up there for a while, then they started lowering
Prices were real low
And then about a year or two after that
They upped them a little bit
And then a little bit after that
They raised them up real high
Where it was like three hundred dollars a ton
And then all of a sudden they dropped it straight back down
To like a hundred ten dollars now
With gas prices rising
I guess it's making it harder on people
To get back and forth to work and do everything
So they're going to lower their prices
Cause gas is high, not too many people can take it there
Like Cadillac converters
You gotta, when you cut them off the vehicle
And take them and sell them
You gotta go ahead and fill out a little bit of paperwork
And then they send it in to Frankfurt
And then Frankfurt will now get checked for
That Cadillac converter
It takes like three to five days to get it
I don't mess with them either
Cause a lot of people are stealing them
And taking them off the cars and stuff
So all these warehouses are coming up abandoned
Cause they're sending the jobs somewhere else
There's been a lot of people robbing them
Taking the copper out of them and stuff
They cut a couple of boys up the street
The other night for breaking in the brownies building
And took them to jail
They cut them with two bags of copper and stuff
And took them down
I don't blame them for really making the law on them
Scrapping them
And then they stopped by some table
I've had competition ever since I've been in
I don't worry about competition
I've never let competition worry me
I try to treat my customers the best I can
If the customers like you, they're going to return
There was days that I thought about giving it up
I mean, you got certain months of the year
That things really slows down
You're not making good money
And you're burly making ends meet
Then I guess the good lord, he takes care of us
Maybe two or three months down the road
It starts coming back up
If you have saved your money
Watch what you're doing, you can make money
You can't get out here and party
And drink and carry on
I mean, you've got to save that money
But now I don't think many people would do
What I've done in my life
I've been married twice
It's been 14 years since my second divorce
And I've been off this place two days and 14 years
I've had two vacation days and 14 years
I'm married to my junkyard
And my customers
Right now I'm waiting on man's back
And the pricing of the cars to go up
Because when they go up
I'd like to sell at least 5,000 of these cars
I figure I've got around 7,000 right now on hand
I mean, right now I've got probably
Five different things
I'm saving back for the prices to go up on right now
I mean, once you get built up, you can hold
But when you run tight of money, you can't hold
You've got to sell on that day's market
And that's where the little man can't make it
And ever since I got in with man's back
And like wise recycling
The bigger places, the bigger companies
That's when I started making money
I mean, man's back has really helped me
I hope my three kids don't have to see it as far as I did
I think they'd be well left
Okay
I hope my boy takes it over
Does he work with you?
Yes
Oh
He's been with me since old seven, I think
He used to work at Guardian out there
And I talked to him in the quitting and coming
To help me
I told him, I said, you'll never have nothing working
For the other man
I said, you want your own business?
I said, look at dad
I said, no education or nothing
I said, I don't have to worry
If you'd asked me 10 years ago
Would I ever got this big?
I'd have said no
And I guess just have a good strong back bone
You keep going
The day that I stopped junking
Is the day that buried me
Where they call me the junkman
Of caps and light gold
Where they call me the junkman
Of my real name, it is Joe
Old Ford's and Chevrolet's
Work the same to me
The day that I stopped junking
Is the day that buried me
Where they call me the junkman
Of my real name, it is Joe
The state to says you've got to clean it up
But Lord, I know I never will
Oh, Fort and Chevrolet's
They're the same to me
The day that I stop a-junkin'
Is the day they bury me
