CLAYTON - Brothers Travis and Jason Rogers arrived at the door of Wise Recycling last week with a pickup load of riches. It was mostly aluminum and brass scrap, but in these days of soaring metal prices, it looked like silver and gold.

"It's probably twelve hundred dollars' worth," Travis Rogers said as he waited to pull into the building and empty his treasures into bins to be weighed.

Prices for metal have risen dramatically in the past six months, according to Bruce Savage, spokesman for the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in Washington. In December, Savage said, copper was selling for about $3 per pound. On Friday, it was a little less than $4 per pound. Over the same period, Savage said, scrap steel and iron went from $270 per ton to $520 per ton.

Gary R. Taylor, vice president of Wise in Clayton, said his operation handles 7 million to 15 million pounds of metals each month. In the past six months, especially, he said, he has noticed the price of iron going up.

Driving the price increases, Savage said, is growing demand for metal in China, India, Russia and Brazil, where economies are strong. With the weakening of the U.S. dollar, scrap metal from U.S. dealers -- which is turned into pieces of bridges, buildings and other infrastructure, Savage said -- is a good deal. Likewise, American manufacturers are now buying more scrap to make into finished products to sell overseas.

As a result, Triangle companies that buy recyclable metals to resell say they are seeing more sellers at their doors. They include construction companies bringing in leftover materials from job sites, professional car salvagers and a growing segment of people Savage calls "peddlers," who may be pulling metallic junk out of their basements or storage sheds, or going around with a pickup truck collecting what they can find.

The higher payouts have prompted an increase in thefts of recyclables, Savage said, with catalytic converters becoming an especially popular target because of mixed contents that include small amounts of platinum, rhodium and palladium. Dozens have been reported stolen in the Triangle in recent months. Thieves crawl under cars parked at dealerships and repair shops and cut the converters off to sell for $150 to $400 each.

In other cities, Savage said, thieves have stolen manhole covers, cemetery urns and cast-bronze historical plaques. Foreclosed homes also are a ready source for purloined precious metals.

"If you've got a bank foreclosure sign in front your house, that's like an open invitation for thieves," Savage said. "They'll take the wiring and pipes from irrigation systems and from inside the house, copper gutters and downspouts. If there's anything of value, they'll find it and strip it out."

Documentation

To discourage materials thefts, North Carolina requires recyclers to get and file identification from the people they buy from. Sellers must sign a statement indicating they are the rightful owners of the materials.

The Rogers brothers, who live in Sanford, used to collect scrap full time and bring loads to sell every other day. But since they both got jobs at a Sanford cotton mill, they do this on the side, picking up pieces here and there until they have enough to make it worth the 60-mile drive.

Like others who turn scrap metal into cash, Travis Rogers is politely guarded in discussing where he and his brother find articles, much like fishermen keeping secret about the sunken tree that harbors the big ones. When he's out driving, Rogers said, he watches the side of the road for the glint of metal in a trash pile.

"You wouldn't believe the stuff people throw away," Rogers said. "If we see something, we'll pick it up. It just accumulates."

Margaret Garland and her friend Tony Stewart of Dunn have supported themselves collecting junk for about 10 years, Garland said. They muscle the items into a trailer on the back of their battered pickup and drive to Wise Recycling nearly every day it's open. They have regular suppliers, Stewart said, including auto repair shops that give them ruined transmissions from repair jobs for half the proceeds. In Friday's haul, the couple had several transmissions, some steel ductwork scraps, an old stove, the compressor off a refrigerator, some aluminum wheels, and a broken air conditioning test machine from which Stewart said he would pry the copper tubing.

Recyclers pay more for metals that have been sorted by type and for those that are cleaner.

"I can pretty much look at it on the ground and tell what it'll bring," Stewart said.

'Gas money'

Anthony Atkinson of Clayton drops by Wise about three times a week, he said.

"I think I've got the most expensive junk truck out here," Atkinson said, opening the back of his Cadillac Escalade to pull out an aluminum window frame.

He dropped it clattering onto the scale and got a ticket to hand to the cashier for his take: $15.

"Gas money," Atkinson said.

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