I was recently at one of our sister garages and out of habit looked in the steel scrap bin (don't you judge me). Lo and behold was about two buckets full of new bolts of random sizes dumped in there. I couldn't help myself and went off on the guys there and they told me they were "cleaning up around here" and tossed them out because it was getting too junked up. I asked if they would have thrown away dimes and quarters and they said absolutely not, my response was yes you did, everything there was a dime or a quarter. The guy running the shop is a friend and I think I embarrassed him to where he made them fish all the bolts out, he said he didn't tell them to do that. Who else here puts back nuts and bolts and wire terminals that you don't use? I can't be the only one! Rant off!
I collect any hardware I come across, whether its new stuff I bought or old stuff when I take apart something..but would NEVER throw out anything useful just because it was in the way or taking up space..
I've seen it happen before and they got the same rant problem is nowdays a bolt can buy you a pretty good lunch not just nickles and dimes Oh i dont think I have ever passed by a scrap bin without taking a look
Going through the service trucks usually end up 1ea 55gallon drum of hydraulic hose half clamps, O-ring kits, bolts nuts...etc
Well don't let the management where I retired from but... a lot of those smaller odds and ends left over from a job somehow got into my pockets and ended up in bin boxes in my garage! Mostly the used ones when something was taken apart and then scrapped. I'm talking the stuff say 1/2 or smaller and like when you get a new component that comes with bolts to install, say like a seat belt or you replace an oil pump that you disassembled and found out it was scrap and there was no core credit charged to it. I did hate to go for a new fastener in the bolt bin and find all kinds of used stuff in there worst was when someone would torch off an old bolt then when they went and got new bolt they would toss the torched bolt in the bin. ***?
I have 5 gallon buckets full from a job I did the hauling and site moves on a couple years ago. Tons of nice 1/2" course flanged nuts, nice belville washers (proprietary I'm told) gobs of 3/8" stuff on and on. They'd laugh every time I'd load up a bucket or two. Until they ran short of the stuff they were dumping haha! Still have lots of it. My favorite are the 1/2" nuts that are 7/8" hex. Love em
I volunteer with a local tourist RR. One of the previous volunteers went to the fastener company and got small boxes of the common bolts, washer and nuts, various lengths that we we use on the equipment. What really t's me off is a newer volunteer who comes from a wealthy family. He can't take the time or it's beneath his dignity , I'm not sure which but if he takes off old bolts, he goes to the hardware store, (1/2 a block away) and buys what he needs plus a couple more. There's bags with 1 or 2 "extra's" all over the place. It's not just bolts, he doesn't look on the shelves for any of the stuff we stock, nope, off to the hardware store. If I mention this to him, I get the deer in the headlight look, like duh, what did you say?
Try seeing the same thing except w/ BRASS FITTINGS.!! 1000's & 1000's of pounds of them.. The BIG BOSS saw THAT in the dumpster at work & went berserk.!!!
Structural steel always comes with the bolts supplied. Usually plenty extra. Normaly 3/4" and occasisonally 1". A number of years ago we scrapped 4 semi trailers 2 pails high full of leftover of erection bolts from the company I retired from. Kept a hundred or so of each size in case we were short a few. We tried to buy fabbed steel without the bolts to use them up but the fabricators and the engineers would not allow it as they "might"be inferior. I shared many with my friends. I should of taken more as now I am scratching at times to find what I need.
Throwing out new bolts, shoot, I don't even throw out old bolts. I've got enough cardboard boxes and coffee cans of bolts left over from projects, to assemble johnny cash's car.
9/10 times they'll find their way back to the bolt bin. Thing that gets me is every time we change a rad or a cooler, the old one gets dumped in the garbage. Apparently the scrap bins are just for decoration.
I was searching the house yesterday for 2, 5/16" bolts, nuts & washers.. ended up putting the project off till today, when the store is open.. NOT a happy camper..
....People throw out stuff worth plenty of money all the time and we have built a business on that principle. In my shop good hardware is sorted and stored in old paint cans, soup cans, or shelved in hardware storage caddys. Id rather spend a few minutes searching through the collection for the right bolt then drive all the way to the store. Plenty of people go through metal scrap looking for usable items at our local scrap yard. But I believe good bolts should not end up here to begin with.
Then there are the Deutsch connectors that Cat uses on just about all newer equipment. Every time I'd replace a sensor, wiper motor or harness I always cut off the connectors. Over the years I had a pretty good selection of them just buy a handful of crimp on pins and sockets and you are good to go on a repair job. Some times you end up with too many male/female ends but at least you only need to buy one instead of two. Also save some of the other less common plug connectors, once in a while they came in handy if for nothing else but hooking up a tester to a machine. Then there are the SAE/JIC fittings and the reusable hose ends, had bin boxes of them all sorted out by size. Not to mention the SAE oring plugs saved them when scrapping a pump or control valve. Guess I was some what of a pack rat at work and it has followed me home. Was given an old motorcycle years ago that was "stored" for years in a leaky shed, no saving it. However over the years have found many people who needed some odds and ends off it. Just recently a guy on the west coast dumped his 1972 and broke a signal light lens. Scrounged around and found a not perfect but very usable one for him. Parts from what most people would have just tossed in the scrap bin have helped get probably a dozen or more bikes back on the road.
On a related note, just yesterday I drug a little single axle Freightliner out of the grass so a friend could use it to shag trailers at his sand blasting place. Started changing tires and realized the tie rod was gone. While we were busting tires and getting it running my 7 year old son asked me why I had all this junk . Once we realized we needed the tie rod I walked out to another truck that's basically a frame and axles with a motor, measured what was there and pointed to it. That's why son!
I have a specific drawer in my toolbox just for bolts and fittings like that. Shop forman saw it opened and asked questions until there was a fitting in there I pulled off a core that he needed for another job.
I lot of people didn't grow up to save things. To them everything is disposable. There gets to be a point though that you have to much junk and need to start pitching stuff. My problem is I forget where I have stuff rat holed away and then have to go buy it anyways.
I even prefer old bolts from the 60's and 70's because the metallurgy is superior to the new Chinese bolts. Grade 8 gets me drooling. Most of my stuff is SAE, I never have enough metric bolts on hand so I might have to go out and buy an assortment.
I can't count the number of times the random piles of hardware have saved my butt. Just a few days ago in fact, was leaving the University and the truck wouldn't start. A battery terminal had crapped out and wasn't clamping the cables. With the stuff rolling around the floorboards of the truck I was able to rig up something to get the clamp tight again. Wasn't pretty, but got me home and saved me from calling the wrecker or walking to an auto-parts store.
Plumbing, hardware, and TOOLS... Today I had a door, that I had built, that I made a mistake, on. Didn't shim it high enough, ant the home-made wooden hinges I was forced to use, because of the situation, had too much slop, and the door dropped just enough, to make it a several hour job, with a hand plane. Flash back to 2 years ago, when I found a power tool metal box, at a gas station, turned out to be a rockwell door planer kit... Door planed down in 10 minutes flat... If I hadn't thrown the cast off tool in the truck, spur of the moment, I would still be a planin that damn door...
Spent a career in food packing facilities. Techs would always take extra fasteners for a job and leave them on the line. The watchwords were "product contamination" a bolt or nut in the product could cause a recall. I was always on the look-out for loose hardware. Emptying my pockets into a box made my retirement collection.
Yea, some people get all upset when they take a bite out of a Hostess Cupcake and get a 5/16 nut instead of a mouth full of chocolate filling!
Well go to work for a AG/fertilizer company. The only bolts you will have around are new because you will be hot wrenching everything. And brass fittings you better have lots of undercoat paint for those. Truck Shop
In a perfect world every one would clean up after a job was done and put extras back in their place but in most shops theres only one guy that cares or wants to help save money and after hes there for some time he stops careing. I save alot of stuff but some times i fill good about not draging something home when i haul off a load of scrap.
Also if you have a bolt tray with all the sizes labelled, one particular space always ends up overflowing while the others go begging because you always end up with one particular size left over after a certain job you do a lot of. If you have just a big bucket then when you really need something, all you can ever find is that one particular size also.
Or idiots just throw whatever size in whatever tray because they don't know how to read.
Or they can't be bothered to spend 30 seconds to figure out what tray it goes in. Like keeping your tools put away in the middle of a job, it saves time looking for them later.
We never had many bolts on the farm when I grew up, and got into the habit of picking up any hardware I saw laying around. I still glean the parking lot when I walk through, just yesterday I picked up a couple washers. They may stay in my pocket for a few days before going into the bin. I hate to see waste of any kind.
I do the same thing D4F.. another thing that gets me is in the locker room.. some of the guys will empty their pockets w/ change & throw it on the FLOOR.!!! I wait till Friday & pick it all up!! & throw it in my locker.. I have a change box in there.. & have to empty it ALEAST twice a year because its full.. lol & its the SAME GUYS that BUM change for the snack machine every week.. lol I LOAN them 1 dollar of their own money & they pay me back the next day..LOL & they're the same guys that bich cuz their broke..Its retarded.!!!
Me to. We hardly had any nuts and bolts either. I haven't found any washers lately. But, I have had a lifelong habit of looking down for stuff since I was a kid. It paid off big time when we stopped at a motel in Macon ,Georgia a couple of years ago. I saw what I thought was the corner of a dollar bill under some mulch by a curb. It was a $100.00 bill. I love Macon, GA !!
My last job was at a big manufacturing plant and it really didn't make sense to have the guys clean bolts and put them back in the bolt bin, it just took too much time and we had too much to do. Everybody had a bin in their toolbox and just hoarded all the spare hardware there. Of course the parts dept was upstairs above the shop so this saved a lot of trips upstairs to get a 1/4" 20 nut. The job I'm at now has allot of waste. We just throw almost everything away. The nuts and bolts waste isn't too bad it's the glove waste that gets me. We had some folks that would use a pair of leather gloves till they got the least little bit of grease on them and then throw em away. I had some guys building a barbwire fence for me and noticed they didn't have gloves, so I put a bag in the shop and started putting all the used gloves I found laying around or in the trash in it. It was funny because with out being told everybody else did the same thing. In 2 weeks I gathered enough gloves to give the fence builders a 6 month supply. Those guys still ask if I can get gloves when I see them. I think companys bring allot of this on theirselves now days. Too many rules and deadlines. I've been told "good job you spent an hour picking up $10 worth of bolts" I guess the boss figured he went in the hole money wise.
JS300 ... It's the time and effort. A considerate tech adds a few seconds to the job by returning unused hardware. But to assign a $10 per hour bolt salvage job to a $55 per hour tech is not economic. PS ... I too, had enough slightly used gloves on the farm for years.
I'm with you hosspuller. I made a lot of people mad a few months ago by asking if we could split the maintenance shop into an adult shop and a kids shop. It's amazing what some folks consider acceptable, but that is another subject.
It shows a lot of how a person was raised whether they care enough to save the good parts for later use, or just throw them away and buy new again next time. Those of us raised with very little had to learn from an early age to make do with what we have, while those sporting a silver spoon never seem to care.
I agree, I was raised to waste nothing but sometimes that can come back to bite me...no sense wasting half an hour scouring to save 50 cents worth of fasteners, you have to be able to make a quick judgement of whether the time is better spent on salvage or moving on to something that's billable hours. But as noted above with the price of fasteners and fittings these days I tend to think that more often than not, it is economical to try to salvage stuff.
One GM plant I used to do work for had "point of use racks" they were stocked with gloves, safety glasses, etc. The costs got so high because of waste they put the stuff in vending machines. Employees had to use their id badge to get supplies, go over your limit, to bad, no new gloves for you! Ed
Today a guy came in from the other shop looking for a 3/8 npt to 3/8 air line. I looked in the place were i keep fitings with no luck. He was leaveing and i was heading back to the beanch were i was working and their it was the fitting in a pile of stuff that i hadnt had time to sort out. The shop is a hours round trip for parts.Maybe Im crazy but i had a good filling finding that fitting.
I keep loose bolts in unused spaces in my wrench drawers, and when I have both the wrench drawer and the bolt bin out at the same time I sort the one into the other. Well today I was doing that sorting, and I realized how much time it would take to sit down and order all this stuff that I am basically getting for free, just the time to look at it and quickly categorize it. So there is that aspect to it also.
Along those same lines Doug.. I had a buddy come out to the country & install my new AC unit.. It was all done but he needed a 90* COPPER elbow to make the final connection.. 3/8 to 1/2".. Now where the heck are you gonna find one of those things WAY OUT in the country?? In my brass/copper fitting drawer, that's where.. Saved him a 3hr round trip.. & I was KOOL in minutes..& looked like a hero.. I run into him from time to time & he STILL talks about that..
A bit OT but then that's the way I am at times. Talking about sorting and tools got me to think about something I would do at times. You know how sometimes on a job despite you efforts to not have a pile of tools scattered around on the project it start to look like a yard sale with tools all over the place? When I notice that going on I would tell myself that I have to "buy" a tool to use it. By this I force myself to put at least two tools back for every new one I take out of the tool box. Sounds a little dumb but it did work and after a short time most tools would be back in the box and at little or no cost in time to pick up when job was done. Actually probably saved some time as I would know where to find that 3/4 inch off-set wrench instead of trying to find it in the pile of tools on the bench. Same thing worked for nuts and bolts. If I needed a couple 3/8-16 nuts and there were a couple of 1/2-13 nuts sitting on the bench, grab them and toss in the bin when I went for the nuts I needed.
^^^ Good idea. I'm going to try that. Only problem in my case is when I work in the shop. Can't get the truck within 50' of the machine in the bay most times.
I had it even worse as several years before I retired upper management decided they needed to "borrow" our only service truck for a couple months to use it on a big road project the other side of the state. We did take out all my personal tools and the tools that were from our plant we kept in the truck before it left. That was probably 20 years ago and they are still waiting for it to return from the "couple month loan"! So after that anytime I had to go to another one of the smaller plants in the area that did not have their own mechanic I had to guess at what tools I might need and pile them in the back of a standard pick-up and drive anywhere from 10 to 50 miles to do the job leaving the rest of my tools in the roll cabinet at the shop. Did require a good imagination to get the job done at times when you knew the right tool of fitting was within arms reach back at the shop!