EAST MILLINOCKET, Maine — The latest car crushers apply about 3,250 pounds per square inch, or the equivalent of about about 301,600 pounds of pressure, to compact a vehicle. ScrapCo Inc. has one that’s about 40 years old, but it still can reduce a full-sized sedan to a foot in thickness — even with an engine still under the hood — in about 12 minutes, Greylen Hale says.
“It’s amazing the power it has behind the pistons to push a car to that thickness,” Hale said recently. “My young fella was there, and he enjoyed seeing it work. His eyes got big like half-dollars.”
“We were impressed with the job it does. The thing about a crusher is, you need to get them [cars] as thin as possible so you can fit more of them on a trailer,” Hale said. “We haven’t crushed any cars as yet. We might wait until fall to start doing that.”
The Hale family bought a vehicle compactor last week as part of its revival of the East Millinocket Industrial Park-based scrap-metal recovery business that it launched in early 2011, said Hale, vice president of The Hale Family Business Co.
The family sold the business in September 2012 to Ideal Recycling of Carmel, which closed the business in January, and the Hales reopened it in April. The Hales resurrected the business partly out of regret at having given it up in the first place, Hale said.
“The [Ideal Recycling] East Millinocket office was doing fairly well due to the location between Bangor and Houlton. There are only a limited number of scrap companies in that area,” Hale said. “People aren’t going to travel a long distance when they can travel a shorter distance, and by doing so we try to be competitive with Bangor. It is obvious that we can’t pay Bangor prices, because we sell it to Bangor and we have to truck it further away to sell it, but we can still do pretty well.”
The company makes its money funneling the scrap it collects to larger processors in Bangor and Auburn, Greylen’s brother Galen F. Hale has said. The car crusher saves the business about $50 per car because ScrapCo doesn’t have to pay someone else to crush vehicles, Greylen Hale said.
Junkyard businesses typically charge $25 per ton to crush a vehicle, with most vehicles weighing about two tons. The family hopes to rent its crusher to other junkyards, Greylen Hale said.
“There is a big need for a junk salvage yard in this area. We are the only one of this size between Bangor and Presque Isle,” said Galen F. Hale. “We are small compared to the big companies, which are usually our buyers.”
Forest products industry companies needing to get rid of junked equipment, residents needing to clear their properties of blight, and other businesses looking for a quick buck by converting old metal to cash are among ScrapCo’s customers, Galen F. Hale said. The company employs three full-time workers and one part-time worker.
One of the saddest jobs for the Hales since their scrapyard restarted has been the demolition of equipment taken from the former Great Northern Paper Co. LLC site in East Millinocket and the former paper mill in Millinocket, Hale said.
“It was kind of sad seeing the machine parts come up to the scrapyard,” Hale said. “But it’s done. The paper we make is done, and we have to understand that.”