Why junkyard owners are crushing cars..............

Exactly.
Everyone waits till the stuff is going to scrap..then they want it. All the while they knew what was there, and didn't want to pay a fair price at the time so you could keep your bills paid, etc. they swoop in like vultures at the last minute, offering scrap price, or a little more. When the crusher is there, he is not going to wait for people to pull parts. He makes his money getting in and finished quickly.

After the stuff that seemingly no one wanted is gone, all you hear is how much of a dick you are for not saving something.
If you want something you see sitting, go get it. In this economy, things are going to get scrapped even faster than last time the price went up.

 

Great thread! Maybe it'll be a wakeup call to some who gripe about all those wonderful old classic cars being crushed by "mean, uncaring salvage yard owners" but do little more than talk about it. Yeah, if anyone wants to save a classic (many have), get up, get going and get it done.

There's waaay more classic cars than collectors/rodders etc. and until the demand for them exceeds supply, the salvage yard and crusher owners will stay in business.

 

it also goes to not having the hassle of dealing with a lot of people to get your money....one crusher...one check for everything...its quick and easy....I don't like it but thats the way it goes

 

good reading.
i try to save what my wallet allows me to,when i see something beeing treated like scrap i jump on it cuz my wallet says so. not beacuse i decided on the last moment. alot of us dont have the money to do as we want so seeing something get hauled away sends a signal of oportunity. have to see every thing in all points of view and respect it. funny tho. they say go out and look for it. alot of times you dont find it,it finds you. i still cant understand why some one would turn down a vehicle to a buyer then later come and sell it for scrap. heard and seen that many times.

 

Ever since 01.. the price of iron ore has been climbing.. the Chinese worked out a sideline deal with African nations that left the rest of the world out of the loop.. price went sky high.. remember when a sheet of 16 gage hit $155 back in '02 ... because their demand is up.. they are building lots of stuff over there out of steel... they say its infrastructure.. my guess is that its tanks... theirs are old T60's and T72's... they need to modernize.

You know the funny thing.. most of that that scrap from the WTC.. it went over to china.

There are a couple huge junkyards up north (wisconsin) that have been crushing steady.. thats what they pay the bills with.. paying labor to piece out cars.. then trying to sell it online and dealing with listing and shipping and all that crap.. it just isn't profitable.

 

well there just businesmen doin there job but it does suck for us intersted in preserving history. my buddy saved his caddy from the crusher and now drives it! feels purdy good

 

It is theirs to do with it what they will. They have paid ever increasing property tax on that land for years. It is hard to criticize someone for capitalizing on the high price of steel. The occasional $30 sale here and there, just doesn't quite add up to the almost instant high dollar payoff, when the crusher man is involved. Economics 101.

 

And that is the roller coaster ride they take. On the flipside, I got my Meteor and first '48 f1 from the same yard in my area. Luckily he's an old car guy himself, so he crushes everything newer than 1980 first, lol.

 

It has to be a tough job...

Customers breaking $100's worth of shit to get to the $10 part they need, and walking off with another $50 worth of parts hidden in their toolbox

Or hurting themselfs.

Enviromentalist.

Etc.



Cant say I blame them.

But its a real shame.


Going to the Junkyard used to be a key part of building cars for me.

But there arent many places left where they'll let customers past the counter....

 

I agree.



Another thing; We are gearheads and we think "everyone" is building or restoring/saving cars. In reality, there is almost nobody building/restoring as far as percentages of population...

Worse yet, the baby boomers that are gearheads are doing less building as we get older, and young gearheads don't build the old stuff that we build.

Nobody wants to build, it seems. Project cars are not selling well.

 

Follow The Money.

 

I know you can't save them all, but I really hate to see a nice collecter car or truck crushed. Just the way I am.

 

And that's a big reason why many of us don't offer to buy cars in yards - we can't get back there to see what's available.

I don't begrudge the yard owners - they're in business to make money.

But it's rare to find a yard where you can wander around just to see what's there. And if you do find one, many won't sell whole cars if they have them anyhow, so the only potential customers are those who already have a whole car.

 

I just got a tip on a stash of a few dozen vintage cars. Any of you wanna put your money where your mouth is? 20-30K maybe?

 

Current phase of the moon; Waning Crescent, 2% of full..............

 

Recently a few friends and I visited 2 yards with older cars in them with our pockets lined with cash and lookin to spend... for the right parts with the right prices. The yard owners were both flat out assholes and had prices that were sky high. When I tried to bargain with em, both wouldn't budge.

I really don't get it... quote crazy prices and not make anything, or deal a bit and MAKE A PILE... too bad for them. None of us found anything we couldn't live without and ended up going home with just about every dime. I was willing to be fair, but felt that $125 for 2 pieces of mid-50's Buick side trim was too high. If he woulda said "$20 a piece for all you can carry", he woulda been walkin around a couple grand richer at the end of the day. Oh well... The other parts I had picked out I figured another $2000 should buy it, but he thought otherwise. And this wasn't any full cars or rare engines or anything like that... just parts.

I saw a post earlier that said $20 is too cheap for a piece of trim, yet he would rather NOT have the cash and keep the trim that may never sell and he'll crush it instead? That makes no sense to me at all.

 

True their running a business, but if you walk into a junkyard, they act as if their's is the last part on earth and your gonna pay them to prove it.
A whole car might might sell on Ebay for $500, but if you need that left front fender locally the price is $450. It's their business they can decide how much to charge and whether to scrap them. But junkyard owners are pretty much peckerheads.

 

The price of copper is going to continue to go up scrap and new. The mines in Chile are closed due to earthquakes and mudslides . Thats what i was told. With the rise in price of scrap the price of new is going up also and everything made of steel.

 

Nice ignorant generalization!

Ever owned your own business? How about the property taxes on wrecking yard, workers comp for employees, liability insurance for having Colorado asshats stroll through the yard, associated business license(s), equipment, advertising, payroll (on days when not a single paying customer walked through the door), EPA inspections (depending on the county), utilities, etc...

Here is an idea einstein, then you buy the car on Ebay, pay to have it hauled and YOU STORE it for a couple years and have dipshits come over and balk at $5 for the turn signal arm.

 

people crush old cars because they do not have a clue as to the value of parts.

bought 2 1960 El Caminos for 500 bucks. sold one for $1200.00 as a roller even though I could have parted it and got at least double that. I did sell the facory AC off it for $450.00 before I sold the car. it was buildable with bad California rust. back east you guys would have referred to it as cherry. I parted the other and the total for both was just over $5,000.00.

parted a 51 Fleetline 4 door sedan. complete car all rusted to shit. I paid $600.00 for it including $200.00 to tow it to my shop from about 2 hours away. no floors, no door bottoms, no trunk floor. $3200.00 in sales from that one.

bought a 53 chevrolet 4 door with a 383 Chrysler motor in it. bad quarters and floors, no proper motor, grille or bumpers. just over $3000.00 in sales for that one.

I paid $1190.00 for these cars and sold $11,200.00 in parts. what would you get for 4 scrapped cars? $800.00 ?? $1200.00?

people just have shit for brains sometimes. even if I had to pay someone to disassemble them and even put them on ebay/craigs list there would still be a big profit.

 

The additional liability insurance for having the public running around the yard, theft and vandalism makes the actual cost prohibitive to opening it up for "strolls".

Many states do not allow once salvage cars to be sold "whole", since it has to have paperwork associated with it once it leaves, inspected for vin/title,

 

One of the local to Wenatchee, Wa mouthbreathers was complaining (and probably flagging) about adds run on The Wenatchee Cragislist by a guy in Monitor, wa (20 miles beyond the end of the known world. who was running adds for what are fairly decent project cars or hard to find parts cars. My take is that the guy was having trouble selling his own junk for a stiff price and didn't want a business advertising against him.

One of my friends has a yard where if you see something and want it you had better get it then as his main focus is crushing. Most of what he gets now is front wheel drive stuff out of peoples yards though. They do save trucks back for a while but most of the stuff gets crushed if it is in the row to be crushed at that time.

Right now with prepared steel at 170/200 a ton here locally there are guys posting signs on the side of the road wanting scrap and offering to pay for it. That will end up probably causing some of those sitting behind the barn rigs disappear.

My take is if you want something, take cash and make a cash in hand offer for it and don't whine if you didn't try to buy it and it got crushed after you overwaited.

 

The end result is what sucks,last month on a news channel they interviewed a scrapyard owner in New Jersey he stated that over 85% of the scrap goes to barges headed to China,Why? because in the interest of " being green" we have managed to kill off steel mills in the USA and the jobs that were associated with it.The Pres said He was in favor of job creation,too bad it's in China!But there is a bright side! all those made in China hot rod parts folks put down,are made from good old American scrap.

 

Two of my friends run salvage yards, one is a u pull it, one is a regular yard. The u pull it make more money in scrap than anything. They sort the metals to maximize profits. I keep a list updated with stuff I want for me and stuff I want for extra cash. I get lucky now and then and get stuff like a Denali engine/trans/tcase and front axle for around 400, drive it 40 miles to my other friends place, sell it for 1200, he then triples that selling the already pulled parts. This is SUPER RARE.

There are a LOT of expenses that you don't realize yards have and every yard is run different. I buy/sell/trade parts and cars daily, there is no way to generalize ALL yards. There's a few yards here I can drive my truck right into, use their fork lift and equipment, others require me to be escorted, one here is run by complete pricks that I only deal with if I absolutely cannot get something somewhere else. All of them do it to pay the bills, some do it to get rich.

 

with RustyNewYorker and HitchHicker....as a kid of 15 and now over 50 - I worked in and know all the salvage guys a 100 miles around Dallas...they get tired of low ballers - most of the time I pay more than it's worth just to keep the karma going - and they know the old shit is drying up...and it brings more than the plastic stuff when crushed...can't sit on it forever - business is business...taxes and employees have to be paid...sorry but that is the business...but wait...we have repop stuff....

 

Shit I've had a guy offer me $300 for the complete side trim off a '56 Super 2-door, saying he doesn't even need the front fender pieces, and I've turned him down because how the fuck am I supposed to sell the car with no side trim? That's $50 a piece if you figure six pieces. Makes $125 seem fairly reasonable for two of them. I'd be willing to bet if I ran the pieces on eBay they'd bring more than this guy was offering. You'd shit if you knew what I got for a couple pieces of '59 Impala side trim I took off a rusty wreck. I have some '53 Buick trim I've been hanging onto to run only because I'm short one piece, maybe I should put it on to get an idea what the stuff is worth.

Point being, instead of saying that's too much and being a tightwad, maybe if you buy a few things, the prices will get more reasonable. If you're going to come waste my day for two pieces and never come back, then I'm going to want more money.

And frankly, if you won't pay what I think it's worth, I'd rather crush it out - eventually there will come a day when if you want that part you HAVE to pay my price because you can't find one ANYWHERE else. Especially after all the shit I get from people because I dare expect to make a profit on something - those people are what make no sense to me. You want me to help you by selling you pieces that make what I have worth less overall, then you want to pay me pennies on the dollar for it, and when I don't do it you call me an asshole and act like a spoiled brat who's mommy said no. Why the fuck would I want to help some selfish prick like that?

 

I work in a scrap yard and we have scrap a lot of our classics and it kills me to see them goo but i cant save them all and my boss wont let me. we still have a few that we keep. We keep a 69 linc suicide door , 4 door chevelle and a cutlass 57 4 dr chevy wagon and some old trucks. I saved a 50 fleetline 4 dr from the yard that i really couldn't see rust away. This was a grat save because how many 50 chevy come in in solid form some guy lost interest in so he decided to scrap it for a few hundred bucks. even though my boss now considers classic to be 80s g bodies.

 

Well said. Both my cars are junkyard cars. A little more work? Yeah, but the Desoto was going to get crushed, and the Plymouth (pretty much complete) would've been parted out. If you want to see them survive, do your part, buy more than one!

 

I&#8217;ve been hitting the salvages as of late and talking with the owners and you would be surprised how many actually have a list of people they call when there are cars come in 65 and older.....I ask to be put on the list ....Also out of 6 I visited 4 actually wouldn&#8217;t let me look at their cars for insurance reasons or booby traps or dogs meant to keep the vandals or thieves at bay.....couldn&#8217;t believe it booby traps<o></o>

 

Round my parts any old car you see is a picked clean skeleton. It would be nice if most yards would "set aside" or have a special place for anything 1970's and older. Most yards I go to 99.9% of thier cars and trucks are no older than 1990 and most are fwd shitbox's that imho they can crush every damn one of them!