The junkyard economist

This episode delves into the life and work of John Ralston, a seasoned junkman in San Francisco, exploring the economics and potential value in what most people consider trash.

1. Junk can be economically valuable and reflective of broader economic trends.
2. John Ralston's expertise allows him to see potential where others see waste.
3. The commodities market for junk is intricate and linked to global economics.
4. Understanding the junk market requires knowledge of materials and their potential reuse.
5. The episode highlights the sustainability aspect of junk through recycling and repurposing.

1: Introduction to John Ralston

John Ralston, known for his ability to find treasure in trash, is introduced as he cleans out a century-old house in San Francisco.
John Ralston: "Every single appliance in his house, enough toilet paper to last a lifetime once he found $20,000 in cash."

2: The Economics of Junk

John's day starts at his warehouse, dubbed the 'museum of junk', filled with a variety of discarded items, each holding potential value.
James Snead: "Some people look at a pile of 100 discarded items and see junk. But John sees the components of 100 new items."

3: On the Road with John

Exploring the streets of San Francisco, John collects and sells various types of junk, demonstrating the process and the financial outcomes of his efforts.
Eric Abaris: "We are riding shotgun with a junkman through the streets of San Francisco as he collects trash and turns it into money."

1. Identify Potential Value: Just like John, learn to see potential value in discarded items which could be reused or sold.
2. Understand Material Properties: Knowledge about materials can increase the ability to reuse or sell junk.
3. Explore Local Markets: Understand local commodities markets for various materials to find selling or recycling opportunities.
4. Environmental Sustainability: Emphasize recycling and repurposing to contribute to sustainability.
5. Economic Insight: Use everyday observations of waste to gain insights into economic trends and market conditions.

On today's episode, we ride through the streets of San Francisco with a long-time junkman, Jon Rolston.

Jon has spent the last two decades clearing out houses and offices of their junk. He's found all sorts of items: a life-time supply of toilet paper, gold rings, $20,000 in cash. Over the years, he's developed a keen eye for what has value and what might sell. He's become a kind of trash savant.

As we ride with Jon, he shows us the whole ecosystem of how our reusable trash gets dealt with — from metals (ferrous and non-ferrous) to tires to cardboard. And we see how our junk can sometimes get a second chance at life.

If you can understand the junk market like Jon, you can understand dozens of trends in our economy.

This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and James Sneed, and produced by James Sneed with help from Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Jess Jiang. Engineering by Josh Newell. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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People

John Ralston, Eric Abaris, James Snead, Giovanni Cepeta

Companies

None

Books

"Junkyard Planet" by Adam Minter

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

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John Ralston
John Ralston is in a nook under the stairs. He is on his hands and knees brushing rat poop off of old boxes, and he's digging through what looks to me like total junk. Car parts, scrap wood, not clothing. John's clearing out all the junk out of a house in San Francisco. The same family has filled it with its stuff for 100 years.

James Snead
The house just sold, and everything inside. Needs to go in this nook. There's chairs, a car axle. Yeah, little tin scrap.

John Ralston
There's stacks upon stacks of cardboard boxes. Some are wet, some are moldy. We got canned food, turkey, sweet potato. Oh, cat food. This is similar photo albums from the 1940s.

A box full of tangled extension cords. Ain't nothing here worth a squirt. A piss. Really? John says.

James Snead
Really? So far, this is all junk. But John knows to keep digging because he's been clearing out houses and offices for about two decades, and he has found all kinds of stuff. The gold ring on his finger that says dad. He's not a dad.

John Ralston
Every single appliance in his house, enough toilet paper to last a lifetime once he found $20,000 in cash. And John, he's kind of an expert. He knows what moves, what sells, what we value. Like, he opens up a box and starts pulling out black and gray t shirts.

Eric Abaris
So you're almost hopeful you're gonna find, like, a nirvana t shirt or a rolling stones t shirt. They are not. But John says there's another thing to check. Maybe they're vintage. He shows us the hem at the bottom of one shirt.

Modern construction involves a double stitch. Vintage construction involves a single stitch. So that's double stitch. So that's not vintage. This man knows a lot about, about the economy, the consumer economy, the commodities markets, what's going on with labor and housing.

John Ralston
He has been called wastradamus, a trash savant, and we are going to spend the day with him. You ready to hit the road? Hello, and welcome to planet money. I'm Eric Abaris. And I'm James Snead.

James Snead
Some people look at a pile of 100 discarded items and see junk. But John sees the components of 100 new items. He sees value. For him. A pile of 100 discarded items is a pile of 100 different economic indicators.

And if you can understand the junk market like John, you can understand dozens of trends in our economy. Today on the show, we are riding shotgun with a junkman through the streets of San Francisco as he collects trash and turns it into money. He explains the markets and shows us the ecosystem of how our reusable trash gets dealt with and how our junk sometimes gets a second chance at life.

Giovanni Cepeta
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Apply detailsapitalone.com dot. John starts every day here at a huge building. It's pink. It's part defunct storefront warehouse, garage and offices.

James Snead
There are old city signs, hundreds of yardsticks, shelves full of sex toys. John calls it his museum of junk. Stuff is piled up so high that we have to squeeze through this maze of boxes. Whoa, look at all this stuff. Yeah, that's crazy.

John Ralston
Oh, my goodness. A little embarrassing. This is not embarrassing. This is amazing. Watch it.

Whoo. What is all this? This is the stuff that we're like, oh, we can't throw that out. Back when he was in high school, he took one of those career tests that told him he was best suited to be a garbage man. And John took great offense because he was an aspiring poet.

So a life of trash? No way. He went to college for poetry, worked construction. After his shifts, he'd haul debris down to the dump and the garbage there beckoned. The San Francisco dump has an artist in residency there.

Eric Abaris
For an artist to go for three months and pick through the garbage, really cool. And I was like, wow, you could go play in the garbage. Got one of those residencies, made sculptures out of trash, wrote a zine called City Sphincter. John became obsessed with the garbage. The reward part of my brain was like so lit up from digging through the trash and finding cool things.

James Snead
Turns out that career test got it right. And I was like, I just discovered, like, a life hack. The secret to life is garbage. And then I would be driving around, like, going in dumpsters and finding cool stuff. I was just totally hooked on junk.

Eric Abaris
Late nights, cruising, looking for junk. Soft music playing in the back San Francisco story. Very white, sexy music playing. And that is how John ended up starting a business, cleaning out houses and offices. He's got a staff of seven employees who help him.

John Ralston
And it's been a good business because when people and companies move out of spaces, they just don't wanna deal with their stuff. So they pay him to deal with it. They pay him for that service. His job is to dispose of other people's junk. He gets paid by the truckload for the house earlier, with the old cat food and not vintage shirts, he's probably gonna get about $4,000.

James Snead
But then when he's got truckloads of office chairs or vintage t shirts, there's a decision to make. John could just dump it, or he could sell it. Yeah. Some of it he sells for raw materials. Like, he can bring things made of aluminum or copper down to the scrapyard and see what he can get.

John Ralston
And some of it is valuable as is. Hopefully, you're smart enough to pick out the valuable things quickly and have a market for it. That's just a little bit of pepper on top. That's when you make the gravy. I'll show you.

Eric Abaris
We'll go see. All right, let's go see.

James Snead
John's got his pickup. Check out front. It's loaded with junk he got from cleaning up places the last couple weeks. He's got tires, a random bag of clothes, and what looks like a ton of metal. And his goal today is to make dollar 50 an hour by selling everything in this truck.

John Ralston
Our first stop, tires. John's got nine tires. We drive to an auto repair shop to see how much these are worth. Hola, Jeffe. I have tires on the rim.

James Snead
Giovanni Cepeta runs the shop, and John starts selling him on the tires. These are good tires. You're gonna want to pay me for these. But Giovanni is like, I'm gonna test these out first. Starts bouncing them, kicking them, because, he explains, the more they bounce, the junkier they are.

Eric Abaris
See, that one's no good. Tire one and two are too bouncy. Tire three still has some life in it. In the end, seven are trash, and two can still be sold. Giovanni says he'll buy those two for about $40.

John Ralston
The other seven will have to be recycled. They will most likely get turned into what is called crumb rubber. That squishy stuff on kids playgrounds. John and Giovanni, they haggle for a. Little bit and then comes out with his calculator.

Does some math. Just give me $100. Huh? Wait, so this is costing you money? John tells us when he finds tires on the job, it's also his job to get rid of them.

James Snead
Which is why whatever he can't sell, he has to pay to dispose of. Giovanni charges $30 to dispose of each tire. In total, that would have cost John about $200. But he got a discount because he's dropping off a bunch and because he knows Giovanni. Thank you, Giovanni.

Eric Abaris
Anytime.

James Snead
That went well. 1 hour in and we are at negative $100. Our next stop is one of John's favorite places on earth. As soon as we get near it, the air takes on the strong metallic smell. So here we are at Sarcosta.

John Ralston
Iron and metals. This is the ferris side. Ferrous is the iron based stuff like steel. Basically anything a magnet can stick to. This is the only tool you need to be a scrap guy.

James Snead
Is that a magnet? A magnet? That's it. That's all you need. Obviously a scrap guy.

John always carries the magnet with him. So before we can enter, John drives his truck onto a huge scale. It weighs almost 7000 pounds. Now we go dump. We drive around the corner.

John Ralston
Oh, hold on. Stop. Stop. This claw is just picking up every like toasters, computer parts. This huge claw is just dropping stuff onto a gigantic hill of metal.

James Snead
John is standing in the bed of his truck and he just starts tossing stuff out. The claw grabs the stuff and feeds it into a shipping container. Small bits of steel and iron are flying through the air. Salute the claw. Don't breathe right now.

John Ralston
This is the stuff that's going to get sent to steel manufacturers in Mexico or turkey and some stays in the US. Steel is in theory infinitely recyclable. It can be melted down over and over again and made into a new lamp or toaster. Which makes the stuff John is tossing pretty valuable. We drive back onto the scale to get weighed to see how much ferrous metal John just dumped.

James Snead
And the scale says John tossed 1400 pounds. The scrapyard is paying a little less than four cents per pound, which makes the total. Here we go. Moment of truth. $55.

John Ralston
$55. That's not bad. That's not bad. Almost a. That's pretty good.

Eric Abaris
Three quarters of a ton. Yeah. We lost money earlier in the day. It's a roller coaster around here. It's a wild ride.

Thank you. At this point John's made negative $45. Actually negative $45.20 because when he grabs his bills, he leaves two dimes on the counter. A tip. That was like the majority of the stuff in the truck, though.

The majority of the volume, though. Minority of the money. Yeah. The real money maker is the non ferrous stuff, the things that don't stick to a magnet. We jump back into the truck and drive around the corner to bring all the non ferrous materials to another big scale.

John Ralston
And we start dumping based on categories. First up, John's getting rid of a bunch of lead fishing weights because, you know, lead is toxic. Really? I shouldn't be touching it with my bare hands. You really should not be touching that with your bare hands.

James Snead
He rubs his hands all over them.

John Ralston
Killing me. The lead gets weighed and processed, and that lead could go into making car batteries. A lot of that manufacturing is done in the US. Next up, two big outdoor light casings. John's not sure what material they're made of.

He brings it to a worker to test. The guy rubs a coin against the metal and it leaves a scratch. The trick is to, if you want to know, aluminum is very soft. You can scratch it. Oh, yeah.

Eric Abaris
It's basically peeling back. This means it's illuminable. And that's great for John because it's worth more than he thought it'd be. And finally, John has a cardboard box full of tangled wires. This is the most valuable.

It's worth more than regular hydraulic. What's in that that makes it so valuable? I guess it's just more copper. When it comes to scrapyard metals, copper is often the most valuable. It is the prized commodity here.

John Ralston
It's an everything techy, like faux phones and electric vehicles. John says the purer or cleaner the copper is, the more valuable. Like an actual bare copper wire is worth more than a string of Christmas tree lights that has copper in it. If you want to strip all the plastic coating off your wires, then you'll get a better price for it. The copper John has today is not all that clean.

James Snead
He doesn't have time to strip the wires, but he's still able to sell them. They have a clean price and a dirty price. This is very dirty. This is. This has got so much plastic in it, they give you a very small, low price for the wire.

John Ralston
They estimate his wires are 30% to 35% copper. Altogether, he makes $100.15 for the copper, the brass, the aluminum, and the lead. The current tally is $54.95. And at least now he's not losing money. We get back into the truck and drive to our last scrap stop of the day, a recycling center at the San Francisco port.

Eric Abaris
Cardboard. I have cardboard. John says. Even though cardboard may all look the same, it is not. Cardboard has different grades.

It's got the edge crush test tells you how strong it is. Oh, look at that. John points to something we'd never really noticed before. There's a stamp that says edge crush test on the box with a number in the center. That number, it tells you how much weight a stacked box can handle before it just flattens.

John Ralston
I feel like I've never actually closely looked at any of my cardboard boxes. This has an edge crush at 32, and that one's 44. 32 is a common rating for single wall boxes. Around 44 is common for double wall boxes. What John has today is called old corrugated cardboard, or OCC.

This kind of cardboard can be recycled about six or seven times before it becomes unrecyclable, and it is a very valuable commodity. Yeah. The price for old corrugated cardboard can fluctuate. It had drastically dropped before the pandemic, then skyrocketed when people started buying tons of stuff. It's at a high right now because there's more demand for recycled paper products.

Eric Abaris
I'm realizing if prices are holding steady. Cardboard's 95 a ton, and Ferris tin scrap is 80 a ton, so cardboard's more valuable per pound. We're at a recycling center that's ginormous. It's the size of a few football fields. It's essentially a warehouse that recycles all the classics.

James Snead
Glass, paper, plastic. Oh, man, this is cool. Junk city. This is the stuff I've been dreaming of. There are bales of plastic three times taller than us.

John Ralston
There's bales of thinner plastic, like the kind raspberries come in. There are bales of thicker plastics. Yeah, that's laundry detergent. And in a meta moment, a recycling bin being recycled in. We head to the cardboard station.

James Snead
There's a conveyor belt that swoops the cardboard boxes around. They get bound up in cardboard bells. Some will wind up on a container ship going to Indonesia or Malaysia. By now, we know the drill. John tosses his cardboard, and we head to get weighed and paid.

John Ralston
They're buying cardboard at a pretty high price. Dollar 95 a ton. Wait, this is it. This is the payout. $0.95.

That's ninety five cents. Oh, wow. Thank you. That's it. It was just 20 pounds.

James Snead
Including the $0.95, John's made $55.90. But he also got paid $100 just for picking up the cardboard. So his total is actually $155.90. As we leave, we see other trucks loaded up with cardboard heading into the warehouse. I call them cardboard cowboys because it's alliterative.

Eric Abaris
But I don't know what you would call it. They're just, yeah, hustlers. They're recyclers. People who study commodities markets would call them peddlers. They peddle our used wares for money.

John Ralston
And as long as there have been markets, there have been peddlers for all. The things John has offloaded so far today, there has been a clear market for where they go. But what do you do when you have something like a vintage can of tobacco that you don't want to scrape? Modern day peddlers have another option going online. After the break, John goes to eBay.

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Giovanni Cepeta
Try Betterhelp online therapy designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Get it off your chest with betterhelp@betterhelp.com. nPR today to get 10% off your first month. This message comes from Capital one, offering commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces unique challenges and opportunities.

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Giovanni Cepeta
Dell technologies and intel are pushing what technology can do so great ideas can happen right now. Bring your ideas to life@dell.com. dot welcome to now. It is a beautiful day in San Francisco and we're rolling around town in a hauler truck with John Raulston. He is a dormant poet who makes a living and makes sense of the world through its junk.

James Snead
People in the US, we toss out nearly 300 million tons of trash every year. And John, he can't stop thinking about all those people who might still find value in that trash. So if you're looking at things and you are constantly assessing them and you are seeing their value. Is it a blessing or is it a curse? Oh, it's an overwhelming burden.

John Ralston
Why is that?

Eric Abaris
Because I'm the last hope for this stuff. And if I can't figure it out, it's going in the ground. John feels the metaphorical weight of all this trash and that informs what he keeps and doesn't keep. Back at his warehouse, most of the stuff John collects in stores, it's here because unlike the stuff we've been dropping off, he believes that it still has value as is. He shows us this 80 year old tin can of rolling tobacco.

Got the tax stamp, the paper tax stamp. Oh, cool. What? And that, to me with the tax stamps, it's still sealed inside. It still smells like tobacco.

Yeah. And it's got like good color, it's. Not rusty, it's wild. Yeah. Some of the stuff John collects from cleanouts he can sell at flea markets or on eBay, we should say.

James Snead
EBay is a funder of NPR. John says there are some obvious contenders for eBay, like gold watches or an autographed jersey. But there are some things that are less obvious. The stuff that's valuable that sells on eBay is not glamorous. It's like weird components that you don't really know what it is, but you look it up and you're like, oh, that's dollar 600.

Eric Abaris
So that's why you do a lot more work of research in order to get the valuable things out of the garbage. There are all kinds of strange things that John has sold on eBay. Expired 35 millimeter film prints and Madonna cassette singles. Even a Chanel shoebox without the shoes, just the empty box. Right now he has 3500 things listed on eBay.

James Snead
When John's putting something on eBay, it's gotta meet some specific criteria. First, it's not worth posting unless he can sell it for at least $30. 2nd, what does the competition look like? To show us, he grabs a ceramic bourbon decanter. So you go to Google lens and take a picture of it and look at that.

Eric Abaris
There's one example for $40 on eBay right now. Rare vintage 1981 fat english hunter, twelve inches ceramic bourbon decanter. And here it is for $22. But John goes a step further. We're going to scroll down to sold because that's what it's actually worth, is what people have paid, not what people are asking.

No exact matches. That means all those people are asking someone to buy it. Nobody's actually bought it. So to me that's not worth putting. On eBay another metric.

James Snead
John uses the sell through rate, which. Tells you how many sell that are listed. So you want like around 100% sell through rate. If it's got like a 20% sell through rate, that means there's 80% of them are still up for sale, and nobody's buying them. So, so they're not moving.

Eric Abaris
They're not, they're not a hot seller. So it's not, it's not worth my time for these slow runners to sit on my storage shelf. How quickly something sells and how long itll sit in his space are as important as how much it might sell for. And John tells us one more thing to consider. Just because something retails at a high price doesnt mean itll necessarily sell for him in this way.

John Ralston
John is kind of like a matchmaker. He has objects, and he has to find buyers for them. And eBay makes this easier in some ways, but there are also objects that there just aren't markets for. If nobody wants it, what do you do? I mean, lately we're throwing away victorian furniture, solid wood, exquisite craftsmanship, but you can't donate it anywhere, and you can't get anybody to buy it, and you can't hold on to it, so you throw it away, and that just feels stupid.

Eric Abaris
People don't want it. It's been about 10 hours since we first set out on our adventure. John's arms are streaked with dirt and maybe some lead dust. He starts pulling out receipts. How are you feeling, John?

Sun's setting, my body is stiffening. It must be time to count the money. John's goal for today was to make dollar 50 an hour. After 10 hours, that should be around dollar 500 in total. We start calculating plus $3, plus $0.95, plus $39.

John Ralston
He adds up what he got for the tires, metals, cardboard, and a few other things. Meanwhile, on eBay, not a bad day for eBay. We had few sales, but they were big ticket items. He sold five items, a vintage lacrosse stick, a Harry Potter backpack. And we sold a vintage silver plated three wick cigar lighter without the base, rare.

James Snead
In total, between eBay and all the scrapping, he made $903.28, which means his rate for the day was more than $90 an hour. And remember, for John, this money is the gravy. Yeah, the pepper. Right? Right.

John Ralston
His real income comes from providing, clearing out services. And in the end, he met his goal. And an entire truckload of stuff got a second or third or fourth life that it wouldn't have had otherwise. So I'm constantly doubting myself and questioning myself. But I'm also waking up every morning, like, pretty stoked to go see what's in the garbage.

Eric Abaris
So that's a success, right?

John Ralston
Coming up on planet money, we are living through a golden age of online fraud and scams. But what are you supposed to do when your money's gone? What happens after the scam? It was so hard to try to face the fact that, oh, you've been scammed in a really costly way. Like, it's devastating.

You're like, oh, my God, can I even admit this? We follow one cybercrime victim to learn how it works and how it feels to try to get your money back. That's next time on Planet money. This episode was, I guess, produced by me, James Snead, with help from Emma Peasley and edited by Jess Jang. Engineering by Joss Newell was fact checked by Sierra Juarez.

James Snead
And Alex Goldmark is our exhibition executive producer. Thank you to Bret Biggers and Joe Pickard for helping me understand the reuse commodity markets. And to Adam Minter, whose book, Junkyard Planet, was a delight to read. I'm Erica Barris. And I'm James Snead.

This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

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Giovanni Cepeta
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