metal·os

Same load.
Two numbers.

The buyer owns the scale and makes the grading call. The seller usually cannot check either one. Below is a single 34-ton load of prime busheling, settled twice — once on a dealer's ticket, once on a receipt whose every line has a stated basis.

Dealer ticket
4471
as received
Gross
76,420 lb
Tare
−31,900 lb
Moisture & dirt
no basis stated · not itemized · no photographs
−7%
Settled net41,404 lb
  • Scale not named
  • Calibration not referenced
  • No evidence attached
Certified load receipt
CLR-88213
Certified
Gross
76,420 lb
Tare
−31,900 lb
Banding & dunnage
12 steel bands, 4 hardwood skids — counted, photographed
−180 lb
Certified net44,340 lb
  • Rice Lake SURVIVOR OTR · NTEP 09-042A7
  • Calibrated 2026-06-18 · legal for trade
  • Weighmaster A. Reyes · TN-WM-20418 · 5 evidence items
Difference on one truck
2,936 lb$527

At 402 $/GT. A yard running four trucks a day is settling this argument, or not settling it, roughly a thousand times a year.

Price runs in both directions

Metal is priced by weight. Trucking is priced by trip. A roll-off of ductwork and ceiling grid fills by volume long before it fills by weight, so three pulls swallow the metal value whole.

Every other marketplace treats that load as unlistable. It is not unlistable — it is a removal job, with a contractor on a handover deadline willing to pay for it.

EPA put 670,495 tons of construction metal into landfill in 2015, at a tipping fee, on material worth $140–260 a ton. Nothing prices a negative load, so it gets buried instead.

Live figures from the demonstration board — the same clearing function the marketplace uses, not hand-written examples.

Three parties on one load

Existing marketplaces match a buyer to a seller and leave the truck as someone else's problem. Freight is 10–30% of delivered cost, so leaving it out means leaving out the part that decides whether the deal happens at all.

Tier 0
Generator
Fab shops · stamping plants · service centers · demolition contractors
A cleared site and a number they can trust
Settles on the buyer's scale ticket and the buyer's grade call. Scrap is pure recovery on a cost centre, so every dollar of leakage is 100% of the margin.
Tier 1
Hauler
Roll-off · grapple · flatbed · box truck
Loaded miles and payment that does not need chasing
Deadheads to sites that turn out to be inaccessible, hauls material nobody will take, gets paid last.
Tier 2+
Yard
Feeder yards · regional processors · shredders
Consistent tonnage at a known grade
Working capital locked in inventory bought today and sold weeks later at an unknown price, plus a reputational cost on every disputed ticket.

A receipt a stranger can check

Every custody event commits to the digest of the one before it. Edit the gross weight after the fact and that entry fails, and so does every entry after it, and the head no longer matches the one the other two parties are holding.

The verifier recomputes the whole chain in your browser. There is a button on it that tampers with the weight on purpose, so you can watch it break rather than take our word for it.

What it does not prove: that the scale was honest, that the grade was right, or that the photographs show this load. That is what the legal-for-trade credential and the evidence package are for — and why the trust tier grades the measurement, not the hash.

Open the verifier
Chain of custody — tail
  1. 08weighed gross
    76,420 lb on NTEP 09-042A7
  2. 09weighed tare
    31,900 lb, empty trailer re-weighed same deck
  3. 10graded
    #1 busheling confirmed, residual Cu 0.04%
  4. 11certified
    Weighmaster A. Reyes · trust tier A
Chain head
d158b2f0463ca7e9

46 loads on the board, 41 metros

Demonstration data on a working prototype. Post a load and watch the arithmetic decide whether you are selling scrap or buying a cleared site.