Tag Archives: scrap

The Rag & Bone Men

Horse Drawn Rag & Bone Man
Rather than the typical van that drove by we had a horse drawn Rag & Bone Man that came by

Since moving to York in the United Kingdom (since I used to live in the New York area I like to call this York the “original flavored York”) there have been several days when a large van would drive slowly by with a man shouting out the window.  From what I could make out he could have been yelling any of the following phrases:

“Fresh Corn!”
“Fresh Manure!” (the van had horse stickers on it and people do like to garden here)

When I asked our neighbour what he was yelling, he didn’t know either.

But yesterday there were several different versions of these guys drove by that I could actually understand what they were saying.  The phrase actually was:

“Rag and Bone!”

Turns out that these are Rag-and-Bone men, the scrap collectors of the UK, that drive by to pick up old unwanted items that they can sell for scrap.  Typically they are more interested in metal as it has a higher resale value, but will pretty much take anything.