How scrap car collectors actually set their prices

Two yards ten miles apart will quote different money for the same car on the same day, and both will be pricing it honestly. Here is how the number is built, from the floor up, with figures from our own records: more than 27,000 cars collected through the network since February 2024.

The floor: weight times the metal price

A scrapped car is, in the end, about a tonne of mixed metal, mostly steel. The yard depollutes it, crushes or bales it, and sells the bale to a shredder or a mill at a price per tonne that follows the world market for scrap steel. That per-tonne price is the floor under every quote, and it moves week to week — today's prices are worked out from it.

Across the network the middle price paid has been £237, and worked out car by car — each price against that car's own weight — the middle rate is about £180 a tonne in the customer's pocket. (The two figures do not divide neatly into each other because the cars behind them are not all the same size: the average car collected weighs around 1,300 kg, heavier than the 1,150 kg supermini most people picture.) That is below what the yard gets for the bale, and the gap is not greed: it covers collecting the car, draining and disposing of the fluids, removing the battery, tyres and airbags as the law requires, and the labour and the site licence that all of that needs. A yard's margin on a plain scrap car is small, which is why the extras below matter so much to the price.

What adds to it

The catalytic converter. Platinum, palladium and rhodium in a steel can — worth anything from a few pounds to a few hundred depending on the car, and more on hybrids. A converter that is missing is the biggest single deduction there is; a converter that is present is often the biggest single reason one quote beats another. It is priced the moment the collector confirms it is there.

Parts. A yard that breaks cars for spares will pay more for a model it can sell parts from — a common Fiesta or Golf with a good engine, gearbox, doors and lights is worth more to a breaker than to a shredder. A pure scrap yard does not care what the car is, only what it weighs.

Alloy wheels, a good battery, aluminium engines and gearboxes, copper. Each is worth more than steel by weight and is separated out before the shredder. An electric car's copper and battery pack are the extreme case.

Being a runner. A car that drives onto the lorry saves the yard time and can be moved around the site; it is worth a little more, and it can sometimes be resold rather than scrapped, which is worth a lot more.

What takes off it

Missing parts, above all the converter, the engine or the gearbox — GOV.UK notes an ATF can even charge a fee for a car stripped of essential parts. A non-runner that needs winching, a car in a garage or on a tight street, a car that is a long drive from the yard: all cost the collector time, and time is priced. Fire damage takes a car down to bare metal value because there is nothing else left to sell. Flood damage does something similar to the parts.

None of this stops the collection. An MOT failure, a car that will not start or a write-off is priced on what is there, not on what it once was.

Why it varies by area

In our own records the middle price paid, district by district, runs from under £180 in parts of Hull to around £270 in south-east Sheffield — for a similar mix of cars. The difference is the yards. An area with several licensed yards competing for the same cars, close to a shredder, pays more than an area with one yard and a long haul; a yard that is full pays less than one that is short of work this week. That is the whole idea of a network: for each postcode district we show the highest approved price from the collectors covering it, rather than one national rate that is generous in some places and poor in others. Where we collect has the local figures.

Why it changes week to week

The steel price is set by world demand — a large share of British scrap is exported — so a slow month in construction on the other side of the world shows up in what a Corsa fetches in Coventry. Fuel prices move the collection cost. The precious-metal prices move the converter's value independently of the steel. Yards adjust their rates as those move, which is why a quote is fixed for a period and then re-priced rather than left open indefinitely.

What you can do about the price

Not much to the metal, quite a lot to the rest. Leave the car complete — stripping the converter or the battery for a few pounds costs more off the quote than it earns. Do not let it sit for a year; a car that has stood loses its battery, its tyres and its chance of being a runner. Be straight about condition when you book, so the price on the day is the price you were given. And get the price from the registration: the quote already knows the weight, the fuel and the age, and the collector who rings you back has priced the car against what is actually being paid in your district this week.