Mill downgrade and rejection claims, set beside your own loading records for whoever answers them.

An outbound load leaves its own trail: the loading ticket and weights, the grade your loader called, photos taken as it went on, the shipping notice or bill of lading, and the sales contract or purchase order it filled. The consumer's notice comes back naming a lower grade, a rejected portion, a weight it disputes or a radiation alarm, sometimes with photos of its own. Someone on your side then gathers your half of the record, reads the claim terms, and works out whether to take the downgrade, ask for the load back or push back.

For the test, AI reads copies of both halves and drafts a claim comparison for each notice: what the consumer found, what your records show, the contract and specification terms that apply and which version of them, every point where the two sides differ, and the dates that count, such as when the notice arrived and how long the terms allow for a reply. It takes no side. Your reviewer holds each comparison against what your team found and sent at the time.

Each consumer grades by its own manual. The scrap manual of Steel Dynamics' Structural and Rail Division in Columbia City, Indiana, revised June 23, 2026, starts from the ISRI specifications and modifies them for its melt shop. Every truck or railcar is checked at the scale, passes radiation detection and is inspected again when dumped. Good scrap that isn't the grade bought is taken as a downgrade or rejected, at the mill's discretion, before the truck leaves, and the supplier then picks between getting the load back and the lower price. Unpaid fees for a rejected load come out of payment, so some claims first show up as a short payment. The revision history records the copper limit on plate and structural going up in April 2025, so every draft names the manual revision in force on the delivery date.

Chemistry, hidden items and photos decide many notices. ReMA's ferrous guidelines call steel scrap free of alloys only under a ceiling for each residual, nickel, chromium, molybdenum and manganese, and a combined ceiling for all but manganese; mill manuals add tables of their own. The inspection procedure of Steel Dynamics' Roanoke Bar Division, dated August 20, 2026, takes sealed units only with two 5-inch holes cut in each end, bans top-dressing a car to hide the rest, allows an immediate downgrade or rejection backed by photographs when a load is dumped in a production area, and makes the supplier pay freight to bring back rejected scrap or a downgrade it won't accept. The draft lists which findings your loading photos and notes speak to, and which they leave open.

A radiation reject moves under a federal permit. The Columbia City manual rejects any load whose source or naturally occurring radioactive material sets off the alarm, and never takes radioactive scrap as a downgrade. The move runs under DOT-SP 10656, fifteenth revision, dated September 20, 2023 and good to July 31, 2027: scrap holding unexpected, unidentified radioactive material may travel one way by road or rail, to a place chosen for identifying and handling it, once the radiation control official of the state that detected it signs a shipment approval form. The facility that shipped the load gets a copy in advance, and the approval number joins origin state, destination state, year and a sequence. The draft records that number and its dates, and notes whether the form's identification and disposition part has come back.

Foundries buy under an EPA rule. An iron or steel foundry covered by 40 CFR 63.10885 keeps written scrap specifications on site and gives a copy to each scrap provider. Its restricted list excludes oily turnings, lead components, chlorinated plastics and free liquids, judged by EPA's paint filter test; general scrap is depleted, as far as practicable, of used oil filters, chlorinated plastic parts and accessible lead parts, under a program to drain free liquids. A rejected turnings load can turn on whether it drained, so the draft asks whether your file holds the specification that foundry sent.

ReMA's own procedure sets the clock. Part IV of its Guidelines for Metals Transactions has a domestic buyer report a rejection at once; if the seller hasn't answered in two business days, the buyer may send the material back in the most prudent way. A downgrade must give the seller a chance to inspect before use, and the option to remove the load, with unloading and reloading at the seller's cost. For nonferrous, the Apple terms let either side appoint an independent surveyor, leave what counts as a significant difference to the parties, and ask the buyer to reject only the unsortable portion. Your reviewer checks that each draft found the right window, quoted the right clause and answered every point raised.

If your reviewer says yes, new notices from your consumers get the same comparison for about 30 days.

Your claims desk reads every comparison and decides what to accept, what to dispute and what to say, and replies leave from your office as they do today.

Live claims keep being compared. Whether a second job follows is up to you, at its own price.