These crimes typically involve more mundane circumstances, such as a dribbling of steel turnings out the wrong gate, a fudged entry in a shipping log, or a big rock in the bottom of a truckload of empty cans. The villain and the victim usually are both scrap processors that are equally pressed for supplies. ISRI president Shelley Padnos nominated her father, Seymour Padnos, to chair the group this year. It isn't an assignment he relishes. You have to take written statements from both sides and then be the judge and the jury.
Someone inevitably walks away unsatisfied.
But that might change some day. In January, Hy Ackerman, president of Mississauga, Ont.-based Metro Salvage, received a disturbing call from another scrap trader. While delivering a load of scrap to another CARI member, the trader's truck driver noticed a Metro bin filled with aluminum being unloaded in the competitor's plant. That was the last straw for Ackerman. He delivered a proposal for a code of conduct to the CARI board in March.