When getting prices for used up undercarriage parts at metal recyclers why do they quote gross tons @ 2240# and net tons @ 2000 #? How do you convert back and forth to figure a "realistic" net ton price ?
2240 lbs. is a metric ton. Just ask for your pricing in the American system so there's no confusion.
nope, close though: short ton = 2000 lbs metric ton= 2200 lbs long ton = 2240 lbs Scrap metal is almost always bought and sold in long tons. from the scrap yard to the steel mills. I don't know why. The long ton comes from the old British measuring system, it was 20 hundredweight of 8 stone or 14 pounds each.
So how do you convert long to short ?
A long ton is 1.12 short tons. A short ton is .892857 long tons.
Well,this is a case of tumatos-tomatoes because in my neck of the woods at the scrapyards its ALWAYS[been scrapping since I was 16,back in 1969--yes I'm old] been American tons--2K lbs.,no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Gravel banks and quarries where I do biz have just started using metric tons by me,alongside the ''regular'' American 2K lb. ton, why,I really don't know because all pricing is done using the American ton.
Yeah, I meant when the scrapyards sell to the mills or to brokers in between. Most retail scrapping is short tons, I sometimes think the yards that use it for retail quotes are trying to get people to think they are getting more from them untill they get there and unload. The best thing to do is get your price in pounds, that avoids all the confusion.
One of these days America's going to join the rest of the World and adopt the metric system. I'm not holding my breath though, it's only been in the works for the last 40 years................. BTW Mitch, a metric tonne is 2204 pounds (1000kg @ 2.204 lb/kg) not 2200.
Nige, I'm joking when I ask this, but which metric system is the rest of the world using. DIN or JIS, or what ever the French and Italians use? When it comes to hardware, Joe Whitworth was simple compared to the mess of metric stuff...
Hi Jim. When I was a kid in Australia we had the imperial system and then had to learn the metric system. Yes it was different and it's easy to mock, buying a metre of milk or a litre long pipe But once you got past the basics the rest was easy and you could figure it out yourself. A metre was a metre, a kilogram was a kilogram... in any country! At the risk of starting a flame war, the US needs to get with the program. You do make it hard for the rest of the world to trade with you. I have imported goods from the US and the exchange rate details are a cakewalk compared to the weights and measures conversions Have a metric day, AusDave
I was lucky I guess. When I was going through the educational system some time way back in the Stone Age Britain was in the process of switching from the Imperial to Metric system, so we had to learn both, PLUS on top of that we had the "new" SI (Systeme Internationale) system of units being introduced. So those of us lucky (?) enough to be around at that time learned to switch from one system to another pretty much in your head. I'll agree with Dave, once you get used to metric measurements you'd never want to go back. Back in the days when Mr. Whitworth's threads were "de riguer" this is how it was done. An interesting look into how heavy engineering worked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzybtS56l6A Try overhauling a piece of modern kit in 12 days - 5 of which were in the Paint Shop .......!!
I have a vague memory from long long ago in my backpacker days in NZ of almost needing 4 sets of tools. Imperial, Metric, New Whitworth, and Old Whitworth. Maybe somebody Down Under can tell me if my memory is is as good as I hope it is. Regards d.d.
Damn Nige... that video was outstanding. The one sentence that stood out while the narator was speaking " these fitters take pride in their job " Thanks for the vid. Ron
Excellent video Nige! Good thing that guy had good aim with the sledge or he would have taken the holder dude's face off.
Great video. Consider that that overhaul is every 130,000 miles. If we assume 40mph average, then that's around every 3000hrs Makes you realise just how good modern equipment is.
Also it makes you think how manufacturing quality has improved over the years. Remember that the literal definition of a fitter is to "make things fit" ........... What I also found interesting was the comment about manpower - something like 6000-odd people spread over 19 workshops (all on the same site I assume, Crewe was LMS's major engine works) doing heavy repairs on what IIRC from the video was a fleet of 7000+ locomotives. Did anyone notice the clip of the machine shop manufacturing piston rings..? All done in-house back in those days rather than outsourced. My old man did his apprenticeship with the LNER Doncaster Locomotive Works in the 30's, I would imagine that a documentary of that works would have been identical apart from "LNER" instead of "LMS" on the locos.
Thanks for the video Nige, it was outstanding :thumbsup:thumbsup The teamwork and timing in the whole process was impressive and I guess the character of steam motivated people back then as it still does now. (I used to go to steam rallies as a kid with my grandfather. I could watch those old engines running all day!) AusDave
I have seen some yards pay the same gross ton as other yards pay per net ton. That equates to about 10% less. These same yards will also try to take advantage of anyone coming in with higher grade material, as in 3.0 feet and under as opposed to 5.0 feet and under. Also had one try to give me carbon steel price for stainless steel one time plus his scale was reading 15.0% light. We weighed before coming in as had never dealt with the yard. After a heated discussion about the kind of material, his scale, a visit from Texas Weights and Measures, calling the sheriff and my lawyer being in touch with him he "graciously" agreed to haul the material back to my job site at no charge. Another time did a job with an auction house and liquidator who insisted on using the yard where he had a good friend. Turns out his good friend was paying in net ton price for gross ton of material, but his buddy always took him golfing, out to lunch and dinner, to football games and the like. Guess who was paying for all goodies?
Nige, thank you for to the linking the video! That is an outstanding movie. Talking about every thing in it would be a whole thread of it's own. British engineering and railroading certainly was the standard of the world. That the locomotive is a Stanier Jubilee is icing on the cake. An old gent who was a mentor to me, when I was in school, did an apprenticeship after the war at an engineering firm in the Midlands. He told me many stories of the shops and machines. That movie puts pictures to those stories. AusDave, I was more or less joking about metrics. But I learned MKS, CGS and SI nomenclature at different times, just a little bit silly.
Are they ten hours long? (Hundred minute hours, of course.)
Yeah. 6000 blokes and that was only one company out of four at the time. I once visited the rail museum in Ipswich (Australia, not England). What I found remarkable was that they had a drop forge for making hammer heads. Can you even imagine a situation where it's more economical to make your own hammers than to buy them?
See now Greg,if you were scrapping some good JD small crawlers you wouldn't have had all these problems and you would have reaped a higher payday.Everyone knows JD iron brings a premium in the bone yards.
That is not a joke, digger, but it is an historical fact! French Revolutionary Time, decimal time, ten hour days, 100 minute hours and 100 second minutes. It was done, way back then, in France, for a short while. There was also a decimal sort of calender of ten day weeks, and renaming of the days with revolutionary names, etc, tho' I don't remember any of the details. So that's a funny thing about the 'metric system': It's really only two thirds of a decimal system. Mass and length are decimal but time is still the old 24-7, 60 and 60 system. Another funny thing is that there is no such thing as a "ton" in the decimal "metric system". No one says ' megagram ' tho' that's what it is. 'Metric ton' is a b*****d imperialization. The slight drawback of the decimal measurement system is that there often aren't convenient aliquot units of measure for the things that people are familiar with. Hence the 'metric ton',and other such corruptions, as tons have been a convenient, tactile and memorable unit of measure for a very long time. (A question for the 'God spoke to the Frogs' brigades: What is the SI equivalent of a "seven stone weakling?" In the USA they'll say a "98 pound weakling", but that not near as pleasant sounding to the ears...)
Cmark, Yes I can imagine that situation. I just lived that exact situation, what you said about hammers. I bought a set of ball peen hammers from the name brand auto parts store a while ago. When I first used one of them, at 4 am, outside in a snow storm, the hammer head broke into two pieces, because it was made of cast bird dung from China. When I went to the auto parts store later that morning, we had an eye-to-eye conversation without words: 'I only sell the $8 turd hammers, because no one will pay $35 dollars for the good ones.' As I held up the broken hammer 'Put this broken hammer up on the wall.This is your advertisement for the $35 hammers. "When your lying in the snow under a tractor, how much will you pay, after the cheep hammer beaks to pieces, to then have a good hammer that doesn't break in two when you use it?"' Ainsworth's Second Law, if you think a stainless steel thermos canteen is expensive, wait 'till you've bought three glass thermos canteens. To answer your question, I was very much willing to have sunk the dies and forged the hammer heads myself to have had, at that moment that I was in the snow with a broken hammer, to have had a good hammer... that's prob why the railroad made their own hammers! PS, that was the era of telegraphs, no long winded telephone conversations to iron-out the differences. Your request for tender of hammers had some req specs. The recipient would hold the paper curled back, squint at it a lot, and imagine the lowest quality hammer head that they could sell to you. You'd first realize the situation when the railroad is stopped for want of a hammer.