Newest Anti-Recession Business Opportunity - Scrap Metal

As always, Americans at all economic levels remain creative in finding ways to earn an income in this ever increasing supposedly invisible recession. This time it is in acquiring and selling scrap metal.

The new entrepreneurs are stealing the manhole covers, storm drains, and street grates in cities around the country, as they are increasingly valuable commodities on the scrap market.

In Philadelphia alone, more than 2,500 covers and grates have disappeared in the past year, up from an annual average of about 100.

Thieves have so thoroughly stripped some neighborhoods on the city’s north and southwest sides that some blocks look like slalom courses, dotted with orange cones to warn drivers and pedestrians of gaping holes, some nearly 30 feet deep. The city is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars — $300,000 at last count — to replace the missing covers.

Thieves can get $5 or $10 for wrought-iron inlet covers, which weigh about 40 pounds and cover curbside drains. The larger manhole covers in the center of the streets weigh about double and triple that and are worth commensurately more.

Phoenix has lost more than 160 of its manhole covers and street storm drains this year, up from 10 last year.

More than 80 drains and manhole covers have been stolen in Long Beach, Calif., this year.

Thefts in Cleveland, Memphis, Miami, and Milwaukee have more than doubled.

New York reports no increase. (They must still be making more money stealing our money.)

In New Jersey, thieves stole a one-ton bronze statue of a horse from the former Garden State Park racetrack cut the statue into thousands of pieces, and sold as scrap to a junkyard.

I've got to hand it to the new entrepreneurs, they are adapting quickly to the new American economy.

The Best Money Guy