Can you get paid for scrap tyres, or do you have to pay for disposal?
Short answer: For the vast majority of passenger and light-truck tyres, you should expect to pay a disposal fee rather than receive payment — tyres are expensive and labour-intensive to process into anything reusable, and there's no direct commodity market for whole scrap tyres the way there is for scrap metal, so a disposal fee covering collection and processing costs is the normal outcome, not a rip-off.
Recovering scrap steel from tyre processing? List it once and let verified buyers make real offers.
List Free →Why tyres are different from scrap metal
Scrap metal has an active commodity market — someone will pay you because the material itself has resale value once processed. Whole tyres don’t have an equivalent market; processing them (shredding, crumbing, or energy recovery) costs money, and that cost typically gets passed on as a disposal fee rather than a payment.
When you might actually get paid
Occasionally, a tyre still has enough tread and no structural damage to be resold as a used tyre rather than scrapped — in that case, some tyre resellers may pay a small amount, though this applies to individual usable tyres, not scrap.
What this means for you
Budget for a disposal fee as the default expectation, and treat any payment offer as a pleasant exception rather than something to count on.
How ScrapTrade Fits In
If your tyre disposal process recovers steel wire or belting with genuine scrap value, ScrapTrade is where that recovered metal can actually be sold to verified buyers.
If your tyre recycling or disposal process recovers scrap steel, ScrapTrade connects that material with verified buyers through escrow-protected payments and transparent weighing.
List or Find Scrap on ScrapTrade →