Direct From The Source

I've been to the scrap metal yard a time or two. It's really a novel idea if you have a lot of metal garbage items laying around. You gather them, and instead of paying to dispose of them somewhere, you get paid for them to go away.

Expecting to make big bucks like this? You'll be sorely disappointed. It takes A LOT at current scrap rates to make much of anything.

But if you have copper or aluminum, you can make up some ground pretty fast.

On Friday (Oct 24), three men in Hoke County, NC were arrested. After causing $50K worth of damages to utility lines, they found themselves in handcuffs of Moore County sheriff deputies.

Clearly, they were trying to get wiring material and scrap it out for money.

Theres a few surprising elements to this incident that caused Spectrum to work 12 hours restoring lost service...

Until this day, I never knew there was a felony charge for "injury to utility wire." Keep this in-mind if you're ever feeling really angry and just need to release some stress out on the nearest power source.

Could you also imagine trying to watch your favorite round of Wheel of Fortune, the internet signal going out, and looking outside to see three bandits hauling off cable lines in bunches? Even worse, imagine if it was Super Bowl Sunday that these vandals got their new business idea.

What really can be taken away are the cajónes these gentlemen have, to try and pull off this gambling feat. I'm by no means an electrician, but high voltage and wiring isn't something you can really play with. Just ask the squirrel that attempts to cross the lines occasionally.

You have to admire the mantra of "going big or go home" they clearly settled on. Forget trying to steal bits and pieces of copper from heating units or plumbing outfits. Let's go right to the source and mass produce some scrap metal in one go.

Surprised they weren't in for more of a "shocking" discovery.

-TBob