How Weighing Actually Works at Shershah — And How Not to Get Cheated on It

Almost every argument at Shershah Kabari Market isn't really about the rate. It's about the weight. Two dealers can agree on Rs 280 a kilo for copper wire in about ten seconds. What takes twenty minutes, and what actually decides who made money that day, is what number shows up on the scale.

The scale is your job to watch, not the buyer's

At almost every shop the platform scale sits out in the open, usually just inside the entrance or right where the street meets the covered area. The buyer's staff will lift your load onto it, and that lift is the single moment that matters most in the whole transaction. It's also the moment first-time sellers are most distracted, because they're watching the material get sorted, or arguing about grade, instead of watching the number.

Stand where you can see the display directly. Not from an angle, and not from behind whoever is operating it. If the scale is an old mechanical dial rather than digital, insist on seeing the needle actually settle before anyone calls out a figure. A needle read a second too early can shave several kilos off a load without anyone touching a thing.

Tare weight is where most disputes actually happen

If your scrap is in a container (a drum, a sack, a cart), the empty weight of that container, the "tare," has to come off before you get paid. This is the step that gets skipped, rushed, or guessed rather than measured. A wet jute sack alone can run two to three kilos. A steel drum, a lot more. On a 200-kilo load, an unmeasured tare can quietly eat 1-2% of the total value and nobody involved would call it cheating exactly, just carelessness that happens to run one direction.

The fix costs nothing: weigh the empty container first, note the number, weigh it loaded, subtract. Every serious dealer already does this without being asked. If a shop won't weigh your container empty first, that alone is a reason to walk.

Moisture gets negotiated into the rate, not the weight

Things get murkier with wet or dirty material: scrap that's been sitting outside, radiators still holding old coolant, muddy cable. Buyers will sometimes claim a "moisture deduction" as a percentage off the total weight instead of adjusting the price per kilo. That isn't automatically dishonest; wet scrap does weigh more than dry scrap of the same material. But the percentage should be stated and agreed before the load goes on the scale, not sprung on you afterward as a surprise cut to the final number.

Just ask, before weighing: is there a moisture deduction, and how much? A dealer with nothing to hide answers immediately.

Bring your own reference for a large load

Above a few hundred kilos, a real truckload rather than a sack or two, it's normal to ask which nearby public weighbridge the shop uses, or to request splitting the load into two separate weighings on the same scale as a check against itself. Yards used to ship-breaking volumes see this constantly and won't take it personally. Professional buyers ask each other the same thing.

The short version

Watch the scale directly. Insist on a measured, not estimated, tare weight for any container. Get moisture deductions stated as a percentage before the load goes on. For anything large, ask for a second weighing without apologizing for it. None of this needs confrontation. It just needs you to be present and specific about numbers, which is the entire job for the dealers doing this every day anyway.