Light Iron & Shredder Scrap Prices in South Carolina

The Reality of Hauling Light Iron & Shredder

If you are pulling old appliances, roofing tin, or thin sheet metal, you are dealing with Light Iron, often called "shredder scrap" at the scale. This category covers any magnetic steel or iron under 1/8 inch thick. Because it takes up a lot of trailer space but does not weigh much, yards feed it directly into massive industrial shredders. Across South Carolina, our tracking data shows yards are paying a national average of $0.10 per pound for this material.

Don't Let the Yard Downgrade Your Load

Shredder loads are notoriously bulky, making it easy to accidentally mix in the wrong materials. The fastest way to kill your payload value is failing to separate your scrap properly. For example, if you just throw everything onto a flatbed and the yard buyer grades your clean light iron as Wire Fence because of a few stray pieces on top, you take a major hit. That simple classification error will cost you about $0.06 per pound. When you are hauling thousands of pounds of metal, that lost revenue adds up fast.

Yard Pro Tip: "White goods" like refrigerators and AC units are the bread and butter of shredder scrap, but do not just toss them on the trailer as-is. Always legally evacuate the freon and cut out the sealed, copper-bearing compressors first. Leaving a heavy compressor bolted to an appliance means you are giving away premium copper recovery value at the cheap light iron price. Plus, many yards will outright reject undeclared sealed units or hit you with a massive environmental fee.

Know What You Are Hauling

Light iron is a high-volume, low-margin game. You can expect prices to range from a floor of $0.08 for rusty, dirt-heavy loads up to $0.13 for clean, organized sheet metal. Keep an eye out for heavier steel hiding in your pile. Thicker structural pieces should be pulled out and sold as #1 Prepared Steel (HMS), which currently trades in the $0.07 to $0.15/lb range. Similarly, never toss heavy vehicle parts like Automotive Cast Iron (Rotors/Drums) into your shred pile—they are worth significantly more on their own.