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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - There isn't a sign on Lloyd Lush's Kam Lake lot advertising his business, L&D Maintenance Service.

But when your job is collecting scrap metal, all you need is a giant airplane propeller sticking out of your front entrance to garner interest, according to Lush.

Lloyd Lush, owner of L&D Maintenance Service Ltd. in Kam Lake, holds a string of wires in his right hand and the wires’ former pipe covering in his left hand. Lush started collecting pieces of scrap metal three years ago, sending them down south for processing and smelting. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Lush, who started L&D as a painting outfit in 1985, has turned his attention to collecting every bit of scrap metal he can get his hands on - mostly copper, aluminum and brass - and selling it to General Recycling, a broker in Edmonton that re-packages the metals for smelting in Europe and Asia.

Working from the garage attached to his home, Lush - along with his brother and full-time helper, Calvin - takes in pipes, kitchen sinks, joints and other reusable parts and cleans, strips and reassembles them for shipping down south.

Lush ships around 50,000 pounds every three months. He estimated he has shipped a total of 700,000 pounds since moving into the scrap collection business three years ago.

Scrap now accounts for 70 per cent of his business.

Meanwhile, his painting outfit still includes four staff members who most recently completed exterior work on Williams Avenue condominiums.

"I started picking up a bit of scrap metal and slowly got interested in it," said 54-year-old Lush, who on Friday was sweating from a day's hard work stripping copper tubes of their interior wires.

He called around to scrap metal broker Maple Leaf Metals, asking for prices, until finally settling on General Recycling, with whom he's just renewed his contract.

Lush also has a contract with the city of Yellowknife to salvage scrap from dump.

"I have my own liability insurance," he said. "I have to wear a vest and safety equipment and not interfere with anybody doing work up there."

Lush also gets a lot of help from Yellowknife businesses like Ryfan Electric, JSL Mechanical, Kavanaugh Bros. and GAP Electric, who supply him with material - for a price.

With scrap taking up so much of his time, he's siphoned off supervision of his painting unit to someone else, content to work in his garage.

"I enjoy working with my hands," he said.

Scrap collection has generated one other full-time position for his brother Calvin, whose brow was thick with sweat Friday as he laboured under the hot afternoon sun, collecting various parts of an apartment heating line made of aluminum.

"Whatever anybody brings in, we clean it, cut it and do whatever it takes to get it to the point of shipping it out," said Calvin.

Lush said he is in the process of speaking to the three Yellowknife-area diamond mines about collecting their scrap.