How much of the price difference between regions comes down to freight and transport cost alone?
Short answer: For bulky, lower-value materials like mixed steel, freight can account for a genuinely significant share of the total price gap between regions, since transport cost is a relatively fixed cost per tonne-kilometre regardless of the material's underlying value — for higher-value materials like clean copper, freight is a much smaller proportion of the total value, so the regional gap tends to be smaller.
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List Free →Why freight cost is roughly fixed but value isn’t
Moving a tonne of material a given distance costs roughly the same regardless of what that tonne is worth — which means freight eats a bigger percentage of the price for low-value bulky scrap than it does for high-value dense scrap.
What this means for steel versus copper specifically
A tonne of mixed steel is bulky and relatively low-value, so freight cost can be a meaningful chunk of the total price; a much smaller volume of copper carries far more value, making freight a rounding error by comparison.
Why this explains a lot of “unfair” seeming price gaps
When a regional price gap looks large in percentage terms for bulky materials, it’s often simply freight cost showing through, rather than any buyer trying to underpay.
How ScrapTrade Fits In
ScrapTrade shows current pricing so you can judge for yourself whether a quoted price reflects genuine freight economics.
Regional price gaps are real but explainable — freight, distance to processors, and local buyer competition. ScrapTrade connects verified buyers and sellers with transparent weighing and escrow-protected payments.
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