Metal Dealer

You make your money on the spread between what you pay and what you sell for. Commodity price knowledge — LME spot prices, scrap grades, regional market differentials, seasonal patterns — is the baseline. Whether you're buying scrap from a demolition crew or selling cut steel to a fabricator, you need to know today's price and where it's likely to go before you commit. Pricing a deal wrong by a few cents per pound on a large lot is a visible loss, and they accumulate.

The physical side of the business is real. Heavy material logistics — trucks, scales, forklifts, yard space — define the operational backbone. You're coordinating pickups, managing the yard inventory, ensuring grade segregation so mixed scrap doesn't contaminate a higher-value load. Whether you buy retail from walk-in scrap customers or wholesale from industrial generators, the grading and sorting function is where margin either gets captured or lost.

The deal flow varies with peak industrial activity — construction cycles, manufacturing output drive volumes. When markets are rising, buyers are aggressive; when they're falling, you're managing inventory you bought too high. The best metal dealers have a read on the cycle and adjust their buying accordingly. Relationship management with industrial accounts — fabricators, machine shops, demolition contractors — is the sustainable book of business; walk-in trade fills gaps but rarely defines the operation.