Usually, when I am driving, half of the time my eyes are peering through the woods, thickets, and fields instead of on the road. I know this is not a safe habit, but you never know what you might miss if you don't look. Driving down a country road, I spotted a big pile of rusty cans. My heart about stopped. I found a place to turn around to get a closer inspection. Here is a picture peering into the dumpsite.
This is by far the biggest can dump I have found so far, as far as quantity.

While drooling about all the beer cans I was about to unearth, I started digging away. Two hours later, not a single beer can, or alcoholic beverage of anytype. I found a few different Yukon Club and Shasta flats. Every single soda flat had either the whole top or the whole bottom taken off. I found this kind of strange. Not a single beer can!!! Has this ever happened to anyone before??? Talk about being depressed. I spent 4 hours here in all those cans and not a single beer. My thoughts when I first encountered this spot was "Jackpot!!!" Man, was I wrong. Just thought I would share this trial and tribulation with you. Good luck to everyone ripping the rust and hope to see some of your recent digs soon!!! Robert

Nothin' like dump pictures to get my heart racing! On the way from Springfield to Imperial Missouri last weekend I decided to take a secenic route and did a little scouting. Found a dump with oil cans and beer cans poking out of the leaves. The beer cans were just late 50s Stag and Budweiser, but there is a lot of dump to dig and hoping for some nice surprizes when I go back. Picked up a "Life Motor Oil" can, and there are more of those there. Nice to have a dump to look forward to when the weather gets cooler. Man, I can't wait until autumn - I have 30 to 40 chigger bites from just 5 minutes in the woods last weekend. In the words of the great Robby Powell, "I'm an itchin' mother!"

Thanks Kotto! My heart slowed down real quick when I was acually in there digging. Speaking of motor oil cans, I secured permission to crawl under a c.1910 peer and beam house a couple of blocks from mine. Last Saturday, I grabbed the flashlight and under I went. Found these 2 cans under there.
I shined the flashlight and spotted a nice shiny conetop. It took about 5-10 minutes to get to it and it turned out to be brake fluid. @#$%!!! Oh well, you can't win them all. The motor oils are TEXAS CITY MOTOR OIL cans from Fort Worth, Texas. I did an ebay search with no luck and a web search turned up nothing. Maybe good ones? Robert

My brother Kevin is the oil can collector and I know he doesnt have one of those. By the way, was the brake fluid cone top a Wagner Lockheed?

I did find 2 beer cans under the house. Both were Bud's with TABTOP around the bottom. One of these days, I hope to crawl under a house that some serious alcoholics from the 30's and 40's lived in. Robert

found a dump like that in West Virginia, dug for 3 hours and not 1 beer can. found out later the county
I was in was a DRY county untill the early 70s.

Not a Wagner, should I keep all cone brake fluids? Or did the Wagners only get the paint overs? Robert

Robert,

You shouldn't be disappointed with finding other cans.

Those pop cans, oil cans, brake fluid cans can be sold on ebaY and give gas money to search for more dumps. Okay, so, you didn't get beer cans. The way I look at it, you did turn up nothing, you turned up gas money.

Vince

I have been keeping several of the soda's. These are my first 2 Motor oils I have found and will keep anything that looks interesting and salvagable. I even kept a pretty old Borden's Egg Nog from this dump. The creek dump had a bunch of those Shurfine orange juice concentrate cans. I left all of those, but did keep a cool little grape juice can. It was a flat that was top opened. Robert

Robert, I found a Backroad in Alabama that was just littered with piles of old rusty cans. Dump after dump. Found some big piles of Flat tops & thought JACKPOT Then after the spit shine treatment ended up they were all Soda Flats. Not uncommon to find this as most northern Alabama Counties dry. I have found some good stuff in these Dry Counties though so dont totally disregard them. LEON.

That must be why. A dry county, and still is. The tiny town this dump is located doesn't even have a store or post office. I did find, about 200 yards away, where an old house or barn stood. I picked up an aluminum flat Hamm's, a 4-city Bud flat, and a couple mystery steel flats. I have noticed in my short time of can hunting, that the mystery cans found on top of the ground feel solid. I call them strays or surface cans. Is there a certain name or terminology most RBer's call these cans and do they clean up better or worse than a dug can? Hopefully you don't mind the questions, because being a newbie, I wan't to learn as much as I can. Thanks for all the previous help. Many thanks to Steve(beercanman) and Brad for their personal websites. Those happened to be the first sites that got me hooked. I will probably go back to the railroad dump my next outing and see if I can find some more O/I's and find the damaged one's that I left behind. I know I saw at least 3 different varieties. Cleaning pieces sounds sort of weird, but I guess other's probably do it just to identify what's out there, damaged or not. Robert

I have noticed in my short time of can hunting, that the mystery cans found on top of the ground feel solid. I call them strays or surface cans. Is there a certain name or terminology most RBer's call these cans and do they clean up better or worse than a dug can? Hopefully you don't mind the questions, because being a newbie, I wan't to learn as much as I can. Thanks for all the previous help. Robert

Robert you answered your own question , the commonmly used term is "mystery" cans. Always take them home because if they dont clean up and can throw they away later.

out

dan