Metal Monday Episode #50 with Nick and Brett, December 11th, 2023

Another bloody Monday for the metals market, but palladium is up, the economy is slowing down. Will the copper bet pay out? Tune in to find out! If you'd like to guest star on Metal Monday or be on A Scrap Life, text us at: (208) 487-4311. Produced by Recycled Media.

Transcription

another bloody Monday Brett how you doing the Plum’s up okay we got green and padium not on the year but on the day so that’s about it so you got to you we have 20 days until the end of the year mhm you got get to $4 just for one second that’s all you need are we going to get there no I don’t think so I hope we go 3.99 man we’re going to get I just hope we I hope we just ride 399 all we are is a cou one fed speak away from saying we’re not raising rates we’re we’re happy go lucky the econom is cruising and all of a sudden we might get a little momentum some momentous buying into the end of the year if you follow the the White House’s Instagram the economy is booming right now like iomic baby if you follow that like you know but go if you want to treat just go read the comments in that thing it’s kind of fun fire it’s kind of fun well at the end of the day I mean you can go by what the government

tells you or you can go by what your eyeballs tell you and what your business tells you and ultimately I think these rates have pushed hard enough and far enough that businesses slowed down I mean I mean like I said the scrap industry our business we can usually tell what’s going on at the economy just by how much are the manufacturers and this is if you’re if you’re tied to the manufacturing side dropping bins roll offs drop boxes I mean if that’s a big part of your business like it is ours we can generally tell what the Market’s doing just by what does our customer volume look like right and we have a good pulse on the market because we can really see a you can kind of get a good picture by the copper value you can also get a good picture of the flow you know like you said and we can really see I I truly think you can really kind of see it before it happens you know we can start to see it you can at least see a Slowdown right like it’s hard for us to predict where

the the big you know big economic hits are going to come from obviously there’s people out there that measure things differently like you know there’s the guys that follow commercial real estate there’s the guys that follow the 10year treasury me there’s like there’s a zillion different ways to look at it obviously we follow what we know and just what we what we’re kind of in tune with which is base Metal pricing and scrap flow and that usually tells the tale the other thing we talk we talk about we look at is what of the steel mill activity because we do a lot of back hauling say out of steel mill we Haul rebar we Haul but not only that we also haul um building materials off the West Coast back to boyy like Lumber right like Lumber shingles you know sacked concrete you name it right well if that material starts to slow down then you know that the local economy the construction economy which is really what’s been driving our economy in a big way is slowing down so combine that with you know pipe infrastructure we’re in the obviously the the retail

pipe business so we sell a lot of hdp pipe we sell a lot of corg steel pipe so that really gives us a pretty good pulse cuz with you need pipe to do construction whether we sell it to you or somebody else sells it to you we kind of know what projects are coming right which then we can gauge off of kind of what which doesn’t make us necessarily run our business any differently because it’s like a big ship that turns slowly and you know you’re not turning on a dime I’m talking about the economy but it definitely gives you a pulse on how crazy busy it is or if it’s slowing down and I’m here to tell you right now like the economy is slowing down it’s definitely slowing down you see like the eyeball test when you’re when I’m driving around going to see customers going to help go pay people I still see a lot of building I see a lot of new builds going up is it the the craziness it was a few years ago no so I think like we everyone gets so caught up and I think

people get greedy cuz they think it’s going to be that way forever it’s like the 18-year-old that gets a hug huge NFL contract you know he thinks he’s going to make that money forever you know same with a lot of these contractors that started a business they think they’re going to make that money forever you know a lot of the ones that make it are the ones that are driving a 5-year-old pickup and are comfortable with it not the ones that are upgrading every year it’s the same concept you know like we’re gonna we’re going to survive anything that comes because I got faith in our team and I’m overly optimistic about everything but I I think we’re GNA be all right next year and I even talking to some of my customers like they seem pretty confident next year right now like it’s kind of like the doom and glooms kind of people are used to it now all it takes is one big move or a war a big anything big from the FED to change everything well just it’s all comes back down to like how do

you measure quote unquote success or how do you measure growth right is are you measuring your growth or slow down off of last year or last two years which was batshit crazy or off 20 20 Co year where everything was really interesting and wobbly you know or 2015 when the market scrap Market was are you which year are you measuring against right and I think you know and I was so we did our Christmas party in in Oregon um this weekend and we were talking for bnk and we were talking about um the number of loads they shipped on average per month in 202 23 and in the in the span of 10 years how far they’ve came right cuz we partnered with them in 2020 or in 2013 and this year would be our 10 year and they at that time they didn’t we didn’t have the baker yard and we didn’t have scrap as part of it was just an auto salvage so we added you know another yard and we added the scrap side of it but how far they’d came in 10 years and I was telling those guys I

was like you guys should be super proud of yourselves because it really took us 20 to 25 years to get to that volume you know MH and I was like you guys are really I mean crushing it you know to and I was like so don’t be so don’t ever think that you know oh we didn’t get we’re not as big as this guy you’re not as you know don’t do as much volume as that guy you’re just comparing yourself to what you’ve done you know and what you’re capable of doing for them I’m like hey you’re farther along than we were yeah and it took us you know twice as many years plus to get there so you guys should be patting yourself on the app saying great job versus you know you know wonder how so I guess I it’s just comparative right who you comparing yourself against what year are you comparing yourself against what pricing are you comparing yourself against and ultimately I mean as far as lasting long if you have’t if your owners or your managers or whatever are smart and they’re you know you know putting things

in place to be able to survive a Slowdown then you’re going to be in good shape you’ll you’ll figure it out but if you’re out there buying the SP you’re taking a bunch of money out of your business and buying a bunch of you might struggle yeah that’s the way it is in my opinion K did you get any Clarity on Ferris we didn’t have it last week it was an up Market depends on the grade I mean you’re seeing some big up moves I mean like on the in the midwest some of those markets I mean you’re seeing 50 60 70 bucks pend on grade you know we’re a little TI more tied to the um the export Market here so we’re we’re not getting those that big of jumps on some material MH um so we kind of have we’re kind of a little more tied our hands are a little tied a little tighter but if you’re shipping into a hot roll Mill or you’re shipping into some of these Mills in Midwest and some of these foundaries you’re probably getting some big up money this month you know that’s a

big Mo 60 70 bucks depends on the grade so um over here we’re getting up money um and you know we’re gonna try and push and keep this thing going this momentum going into January yeah and if you look at like the fast markets you know in end of November to right now you’re seeing 10 to 20 up on grades in our in the west coast yeah we don’t we didn’t get the love that the mid west because we have rebar Mills we ship to right so a we have we’re getting hampered by the export Market B we ship to two rebar Mills MH rebar is part of construction which goes back to our previous point Y it’s not nearly moving at the clip that it once was you know the last couple years but there’s still demand so we’re still hanging in there and we’ll keep watching the nonf Faris I mean it’s been you know in the grand scheme of things it’s been pretty damn sideways for a little while you know it’s still there it seems like it wants to run but then the juice gets pulled out of it every

every week it runs a little and every Monday yeah gets pulled back out so I hope we get 3.99 to the rest of the year and then you know January 1 and 450 so happen all right thanks everybody have a great day