Short answer
Do scrap yards require ID in Texas?
Yes. Texas Occupations Code chapter 1956 requires the yard to record every purchase along with the seller's photo ID, the plate on the vehicle the metal arrived in, and either proof you own the metal or your signature saying you do. Bring your driver's license on every trip, even to a yard that already knows your truck.
Yards that buy scrap from the public sit in Point Blank, Huntsville, Livingston, Lufkin, and Crockett, and every one of them is named with its phone number further down this page. What a yard pays moves weekly with the commodity market, which is why you will find zero per-pound prices in this article and why any price list you dig up online is probably already stale. Call the yard the same week you plan to sell and ask what they are paying that day.
Price is the easy part anyway. The parts that surprise first-time sellers are the paperwork and the refusals. Texas has an entire chapter of state law spelling out how a scrap sale has to go, a federal rule decides whether your old fridge gets accepted at all, and a fair amount of what is rusting behind the barn has no scrap value whatsoever.
We are County Line Junk Disposal, a family junk hauling outfit based in Trinity, and we sort metal out of cleanout loads every week. Here is what to expect at the gate, and when the drive is worth your Saturday.
Where can you sell scrap metal in East Texas?
Yards that buy from the public sit in Point Blank, Huntsville, Livingston, Lufkin, and Crockett. Prices change weekly with the metals market, so call before you load and ask what they are paying, what materials they are taking, and whether there is a minimum load.
Here they are, with the one detail that does not go stale. A yard's name and phone number hold for years, while the price it quotes holds for about a week. So the table carries contact details only, confirmed on 6 October 2026, and no prices at all. Hours move around too, and some of these yards publish different hours than their own Google listing shows, so ring before you load rather than trusting anything written down.
| Yard | Where | Phone |
|---|---|---|
| Eastex Recycling | Point Blank, 7351 US 190 | (713) 887-9539 |
| T J Burdett & Sons Recycling | Huntsville, 570 I-45 N | (936) 291-2525 |
| Huntsville Scrap Metal & Recycling | Huntsville, 2321 TX 19 | (936) 294-0399 |
| West Livingston Scrap Metals | Livingston, 5833 US 190 W | (832) 422-0007 |
| CMC Recycling | Lufkin, 4060 US 59 N | (936) 639-3718 |
| Houston County Scrap | Crockett, 403 S 2nd St | (936) 544-7931 |
Confirmed 6 October 2026 against each yard's own site or its own Google listing. Call for today's price and today's hours.
Two naming quirks will save you a phone call. The Crockett yard trades as Houston County Scrap and is owned by K&L Recycling out of Tyler, so you will see both names on the same place. And a search for Crockett scrap turns up a second yard on NW Loop 304 whose number sits one digit from the one above, marked temporarily closed, so read the number back before you drive.
The good news is coverage. Whether you are coming off a farm outside Huntsville, a lake place near Livingston, a shop on the edge of Lufkin, the north shore around Point Blank, or farmland out past Crockett, a buying yard is within reasonable trailer range. And if the pile you are sorting includes plenty that no yard wants, our guide to where to dump junk in Lufkin and Angelina County covers the landfill side of the trip.
What do Texas scrap yards require from you?
A photo ID, your license plate, and your word on where the metal came from. Texas Occupations Code chapter 1956 requires the yard to record every purchase, copy your photo ID, write down the plate on the vehicle you hauled the load in, and get either proof you own the metal or your signature saying you do. Cash and debit are reserved for sellers holding a cash transaction card, so a first-timer gets a check or a direct deposit.
The first visit catches people off guard. You hand over a load of steel, then the clerk asks for your driver's license, photographs or copies it, walks out to write down your plate, and has you sign that the metal is yours to sell. All of that comes straight out of Texas Occupations Code chapter 1956, the state law written to make stolen metal hard to move, read against the statute on 6 October 2026. The clerk working through that list is keeping the yard's registration alive.
The payment rule is the one that stings if you were counting on folding money for the drive home. Under the same chapter, a yard can only hand over cash or run a debit card if you hold a cash transaction card it has issued you. Without one, you get a check, a money order, or a direct deposit.
Thumbprints come up less than people expect. The state only puts one in the record of purchase when the item is a catalytic converter and the seller has no cash transaction card, though a county or city is allowed to require one on every ticket, and applying for a card means printing your thumb on the application. So a yard that rolls your thumb on a scrap run is following a local rule or its own policy, not a statewide one.
One rule catches homeowners out cold. If the load includes the condensing or evaporator coils out of a central heat or air unit, you have to show the yard an air conditioning and refrigeration licence or technician registration, or a receipt for the coils, or a receipt for the replacement unit you bought. No paper, no sale. Pull the old unit yourself and you may be the only person in the transaction who cannot legally sell the coils, so keep the invoice from whoever put the new one in.
So plan for it: photo ID every single trip, the truck you drove written down, and a check to deposit afterward. If you see yourself selling regularly, ask the yard how to apply for a cash transaction card and whether they issue them at all.
Will a scrap yard take a fridge, freezer, or AC unit?
Usually only after the refrigerant has been recovered. Section 608 of the federal Clean Air Act requires refrigerant to be professionally recovered before a fridge, freezer, or air conditioner is scrapped, so yards turn away freon units that arrive without recovery documentation. Most yards also refuse sealed or pressurized tanks, propane bottles included.
This is the refusal that generates the most parking-lot arguments, and the yard is on solid ground every time. Venting refrigerant is a federal violation under Clean Air Act Section 608, so a yard that shreds an uncaptured fridge is buying itself real trouble.
That is why the scale operator wants proof the gas is already out before the unit crosses the scale. The same caution applies to anything sealed under pressure. A propane bottle in a shredder is a bomb, and most yards will wave off tanks of any kind as standard practice.
If the fridge is the whole reason you are reading this, start with our full walkthrough on how to get rid of an old refrigerator in Texas, and for the rest of the laundry room there is our guide to disposing of old appliances.
Or skip the runaround: we haul fridges and freezers all the time. A freon unit adds $35 on top of the load price, and the refrigerant question gets handled the right way instead of becoming your problem at a scale house.
What is actually worth scrapping?
In general terms: stripped appliances, tin roofing, farm implements, and copper wire all carry real scrap value. What each is worth per pound changes weekly, so call the yard before you spend an afternoon loading.
Around here the good stuff is predictable. Tin pulled off a barn or house re-roof stacks flat, loads fast, and yards take it all day. Dead farm implements, the shredder that seized up years ago or the disc rusting by the fence line, are heavy steel through and through.
Washers, dryers, and water heaters count as clean appliance scrap once cords and hoses are dealt with, keeping in mind the freon rule above for anything that ever kept food cold. And copper wire left over from a rewiring job is the densest value in the pile, which is exactly why the state built chapter 1956 around it.
Then there is the stuff that only looks like money. A treadmill is mostly plastic wrapped around a modest amount of steel. A sleeper sofa has a frame inside it and a whole couch around the frame. Old TVs, particle-board furniture with metal legs, and anything more upholstery than iron will earn you a shrug at the scale. Strip out what is worth keeping if you have the time and tools, and be realistic about the hours that takes.
Then there is the short list a yard is not allowed to buy from you at all. A vehicle, a flattened vehicle, an appliance, or any piece of scrap still holding a lead-acid battery, an undrained fuel tank, or an old PCB capacitor stays on your property until those come out. A fuel tank counts as handled once it is completely drained and rendered unusable to the state environmental standard.
A metal beer keg is a flat no unless you are the brewer or their representative, condition regardless. Every yard posts these rules on a sign by the scale in letters two feet tall, because chapter 1956 tells them to, so read it while you wait.
Should you scrap it yourself or have it hauled?
One clean truck bed of steel? Haul it yourself and keep the check, that trip beats paying anybody. A barn full of mixed junk with metal buried under rotten lumber and old furniture usually pencils out to one haul-off instead, and we set scrap-worthy metal aside as part of the job.
We would rather tell you the truth than book a job that makes no sense for you. If you own a truck and the pile is tin roofing or clean steel, load it, make the drive, take your check, done. Good use of a Saturday morning.
One more free option worth knowing: some local scrappers around Trinity County advertise free pickup of clean metal loads, since the scrap value is their payday. For a pile of pure metal with easy access, that can genuinely cost you nothing, so ask around before you pay anyone, including us.
The math flips when the metal is mixed into everything else. A barn cleanout is usually one part sellable steel to ten parts junk: wet cardboard, busted furniture, feed sacks, a couch the raccoons found first. Sorting that pile yourself means days of work, a scrap run, a separate landfill run, and gate fees on the junk half anyway. Our way is one trip. We charge by the space your stuff fills in the trailer: $95 for a single item, $175 for a quarter load, $325 for a half, $475 for three-quarters, $650 for a full trailer.
Travel is free within 25 miles of Trinity, and past that, out to our 50-mile edge, a trip fee of about $2 per mile gets quoted upfront with everything else. The number we say on site is the number you pay, we quote it firm before we lift anything, and you are free to wave us off if it does not suit you. As we load, the metal worth something gets set aside and routed to scrap instead of getting buried in the trailer with the rest.
Sort the money from the mess
Text a few photos of the pile to (936) 259-3200 and we will send back a ballpark the same day. We answer our own phone, 7 days a week, 8 AM to 6 PM, and you pay when the job is done by cash, check, or Cash App. Get a free quote, or see our junk removal around Huntsville and the rest of our 50-mile range.
Questions we hear a lot
Yes. Texas Occupations Code chapter 1956 requires the yard to record every purchase along with the seller's photo ID, the plate on the vehicle the metal arrived in, and either proof you own the metal or your signature saying you do. Bring your driver's license on every trip, even to a yard that already knows your truck.
State law. Under Texas Occupations Code chapter 1956, a yard can only pay cash or run a debit card for a seller holding a cash transaction card it has issued. Everybody else gets a check, a money order, or a direct deposit. If you plan to sell regularly, ask the yard how to apply for a card.
Less often than people expect. Texas Occupations Code chapter 1956 only requires a thumbprint in the record of purchase when the item is a catalytic converter and the seller has no cash transaction card, and on the application for that card. A county or city may require one on every ticket, so a yard asking for your thumb on an ordinary scrap run is following a local rule or its own policy.
Stripped appliances such as washers, dryers, and water heaters generally carry scrap value, along with tin roofing, farm implements, and copper wire. Fridges, freezers, and AC units are the exception because of the federal freon rule. Per-pound value changes weekly, so call the yard for current prices before you load.
Usually only with the refrigerant already recovered. Section 608 of the federal Clean Air Act requires professional recovery before a freon unit is scrapped, so yards refuse fridges that show up without documentation. We haul fridges and freezers for the load price plus a $35 freon add-on and see that disposal is handled the right way.
No, we are a hauling company. We charge by trailer space, $95 for a single item up to $650 for a full load, with free travel inside 25 miles of Trinity. When a cleanout includes metal worth something, we set it aside as part of the job and route it to scrap instead of burying it in the load.