Junk man is the (largely American) term for a person who buys, trades, or collects disparate items (
scrap
Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap can have monetary value, especially recover ...
and usable or repairable things) considered of little or no value to their owners. This person then tries to sell or trade these items at a profit to other individuals and scrap yards.
Appearances in pop culture
The poet
Carl Sandburg has a poem called "Junk Man," in which
Death
Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...
is personified by a junk man.
In his song "
The Pretender",
Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American rock musician, singer, songwriter, and political activist who has sold over 30 million albums in the United States.
Emerging as a teenage songwriter in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he had his ...
imagines that "the junk man pounds his fender", alluded as a Los Angeles neighborhood sight.
In the television program
Sanford and Son, the father's character, played by
Redd Foxx, was a junk man,
although even in those days the profession was not as common as it had once been.
See also
*
American Pickers
*
Dumpster diving
Dumpster diving (also totting, skipping, skip diving or skip salvage) is wikt:salvage, salvaging from large commercial, residential, industrial and construction containers for unwanted items discarded by their owners but deemed useful to the ...
*
Karung guni
*
Mudlark
*
Rag-and-bone man
A rag-and-bone man or ragpicker (UK English) or ragman, old-clothesman, junkman, or junk dealer (US English), also called a bone-grubber, bone-picker, chiffonnier, rag-gatherer, rag-picker, bag board, or totter, collects unwanted household items ...
, the British equivalent of this vocation
* ''
Sanford and Son'', a television program centered on a junk man and his son
*
Tosher
*
Waste picker
References
Waste collection
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