Straight answers
Everything people ask before they call.
Grouped by what you are trying to find out. If your question is not here, ask it — we would rather answer it once properly than have you guess.
Working with Custom Recycling
Who we buy from, and how an account starts.
- Does Custom Recycling buy scrap metal from the public?
- No. Custom Recycling is an industrial and commercial buyer only. We do not operate a public buyback center and there is no walk-in scale at our York facility. We work with manufacturers, fabricators, contractors, machine shops and other businesses that generate scrap as part of their operation. If you are an individual looking to sell household metal, a retail buyback yard in your area is the right place to go.
- How do I start an account?
- Request a container or a site visit and an account representative will come to your facility. The visit is free and carries no obligation: they walk your process, identify where material is generated and what is being downgraded by mixing, then put a container plan and a written proposal in front of you. Most accounts are running within a week or two of that visit.
- What does a site visit cost?
- Nothing. No-obligation site visits and proposals are a standard part of how we quote. You are under no commitment after one.
- How far will you travel?
- We routinely run about a three-and-a-half-hour radius from York, South Carolina, which covers most of the Carolinas and reaches into north Georgia, east Tennessee and southern Virginia. For programs of the right size, distance is negotiable — talk to us about it.
Containers & logistics
What we can place at your facility, and how pickups run.
- What containers can you place at my facility?
- Roll-offs from 10 to 60 cubic yards including sealed units, van trailers, open-top trailers, flatbeds and end dump trailers, plus in-plant equipment: self-dumping hoppers, 4x4 Gaylord boxes and pallets, IBC totes, 55-gallon drums and custom metal bins built to your footprint. Tarps and roll-off lids are provided as needed.
- Can I get a container for a single project instead of an ongoing program?
- Yes. We place temporary containers for short-term projects, line moves and plant cleanouts, and we also offer live loading when a drop-and-swap will not work for your schedule.
- How do pickups get scheduled?
- Either on a fixed schedule or on call, whichever fits how your material accumulates. Freight moves through our own fleet and our sister company Custom Trucking & Hauling, so scheduling is handled in-house rather than brokered out.
- Can you handle oversized material that will not fit in a container?
- Yes. Flatbed and open-top trailers cover structural steel, process vessels, machinery and other oversized pieces. For material that needs to be cut down, rigged or removed from a building first, our sister company Custom Demo & Dismantling handles dismantling, torching and rigging.
- How do you keep high-value metal from being stolen on site?
- Sealed and lidded roll-offs. Copper, wire and clean non-ferrous sitting exposed in an open container is a standing invitation, and moving that material into a locked container is one of the most common reasons customers call us in the first place.
Materials & grading
What we take, and how you get paid for it.
- What metals does Custom Recycling buy?
- Ferrous and non-ferrous: steel and iron, stainless steel, aluminum, copper and brass, high-nickel and specialty alloys such as Inconel, Monel, Hastelloy and titanium, and batteries of all types, including cell tower batteries. We also take electric motors, transformers, wire and cable, HVAC and condenser cores, and obsolete equipment and machinery.
- How do you determine the grade of my material?
- Visually and instrumentally. Weights come off certified scales, and for alloys where mis-grading is expensive we run a handheld analyzer — including at your facility, before the material moves. That matters most on stainless and high-nickel streams, where the difference between two grades is a large amount of money.
- Do you take mixed loads?
- We do, but a mixed load pays like the cheapest thing in it. The entire point of placing containers at the point of generation is to keep streams separate before they get downgraded. If you are currently sending everything out in one box, that is usually the single biggest recovery we find on a site visit.
- What kinds of batteries do you take?
- All types. That includes lead-acid, lithium-ion, nickel and alkaline batteries, forklift and industrial batteries, and the cell tower work that is a genuine specialty of ours: sealed lead-acid (VRLA) strings, flooded cells and telecom back-up battery banks pulled from tower sites, handled under proper containment and documented for your compliance file, along with the rectifier scrap, bus bar and cabling that comes out with them.
- Is there anything you will not take?
- Some items have conditions rather than outright exclusions: gas tanks must be cut in half and washed out, automobile engines must have the oil removed, and ballasts must be PCB-free. CRT and tube monitors are excluded. If you are unsure about a stream, ask before you fill a container.
Reporting & sustainability
What you get back for your finance and ESG teams.
- What reporting do I get?
- Detailed material totals by stream, tied to certified scale weights. Customers use them both for internal reconciliation and as the diversion data behind corporate sustainability and ESG reporting — recycled tonnage is one of the few environmental numbers a manufacturer can substantiate with a third-party weight ticket.
- Can you support our ESG or corporate sustainability reporting?
- Yes. Because every load is weighed on certified scales and recorded by material type, your recycled tonnage is auditable rather than estimated. That is the number most reporting frameworks want when they ask about waste diverted from landfill.
- Why does recycling scrap rather than landfilling it matter environmentally?
- Using ferrous scrap instead of virgin material to make iron and steel cuts CO2 emissions by roughly 58 percent and takes about 56 percent less energy than producing steel from iron ore. For aluminum the energy saving reaches 92 percent. Metals can also be recycled indefinitely without losing strength, so material recovered today stays in circulation.
Still got a question?
Ask it directly. If we are not the right home for your material we will usually know who is.