I liked the place. Why is this happening? I thought with the car shortage that there would be more demand for used auto parts and things like salvaged tires. They also did towing but said thy didn’t want to pay $1000 for the 2024 license renewal, in addition to not making money during the last year and a half. They never seemed to have an inventory of cars or anything. I don’t know how they stayed in business, but that’s nothing relevant to the last 18 months.
I think I spotted the problem.
There are successful business owner/operators in every facet of business. As well, there are just as many bad ones. We have a number of restaurants around here that can’t seem to figure it out whereas there are a number that tend to thrive year after year. Oftentimes, it’s easy for the casual observer to see why and the people closest to the problems not have a clue…
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My favorite midwest junkyard is thriving after 55 years as a family business.
Their used parts were in their warehouse in reach within a minute. No other yard in the area was as professional as Walt’s Wrecking in Ohio.
The 2 pull your part places near me in Florida are also doing well. One is a dump, the other is clean and professional.
“They never seemed to have an inventory of cars”
A virtual junkyard! Ahead of their time!
Another near by junk yard that is bigger started taking in a lot more of the popular older vehicles, like the 90s trucks. They might have taken business away. This one does have an inventory and they participate in car-part.com.
Well why didn’t your favorite place do that to begin with? Were they not aware that a business should supply what the customers are looking for in order to thrive?
Duh.
Sounds a bit like this cheese shop:
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They did, and they were the place to go for the older vehicles. The other one was only taking newer vehicles for a while, but they seem to have changed their policy lately.
Hard to say why one specific business fails. Maybe the management made some bad business decisions which allowed the competition to take advantage with a higher % of the local area’s junkyard business. Or maybe the owners want to retire and nobody else is willing to buy them out. Or maybe new gov’t regulations & fees make owning a junkyard and making a reasonable profit impossible. Next time you visit, suggest to just ask them.
Many of the old junk yards are changing their model. Instead of having cars just piled up all over the place on 10+ acres, they are dismantling the vehicles and parting the parts out.
Some of these Vintage and Used Vehicle Supply Centers (Vehicle Junk Yards…) are being Zoned out of business. They found a great place (probably on the outskirts or rural areas of the town or city) to establish their business and now, years later, urban sprawl has encroached upon them and now the neighbors are complaining about it, you name it: noise, smell, sight, blight, etc… Additionally, the municipality could be threatening Eminent Domain because they can collect a lot more tax revenue from a subdivision of hundreds of homes than they collect from the yard…
My brother in law came back from Vietnam and bought a small farm (hundred acres or so…) south of Albany, NY. He was a truck driver by trade, an only farmed for the family. Everything was fine until the mid-'90s, when urban sprawl closed in. Big Developers sponsored expensive, executive style homes, and the county started rezoning. The rezoning raised the tax liability beyond their ability to pay and they had to sell. Today, his farm now contains 75 or so homes all centered around the pond they fished in… And no, he did not make a killing when he sold it…
Some of the older ones Junk Yards may have other issues and may be facing pollution issues, leaking oil, gas, lubricants, etc and they might be getting out before the EPA can pounce upon them for a clean-up.
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That’s only part of it. They are an environmental nightmare.
I know that they are an environment nightmare… that’s what I was referring to in my third paragraph, quoted below……
I remember my family and the neighbors pouring used motor oil along the foundation of their homes, they believed that it was a good termite barrier…
You will get no argument from me about the pollution generated by these business. But let’s be honest; for example, the wife and I went to the grocery store today and spent over $150, I was hard pressed to find one item that we bought that came in some type of container or packaging that was recyclable and not a pollution nightmare in and of itself…
Back in the 50’s and 60’s your local garage would dig an oil pit to put the dirty motor oil in. There are literally tens of thousands of them all over the country that have never been cleaned up.
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I imagine a lot of stations did that, as I wrote, we poured it around the foundation of the house…
But my local Sunoco Garage that I’ve written about on various occasions, the one that would “short stick” your dipstick to sell an empty can of oil to you and other nefarious tactics; the one who would change the oil in my 1954 Dodge when it was owned by the my neighbor with a mixed blend of 10w-30 and straight 30 weight, so it was hard to start in the NY winters, and they drummed up business going out doing jump starts…
They did not dump the old oil, the back of the garage had a lot of 55-gallon drums and they poured the old oil in the drums. I had asked them, isn’t that dangerous and the old mechanic would often toss a lite match into the oil… I do not know why the place did not go up in flames… But once a year or so they sold the old oil off and it was hauled away. I do not know what they did with it, recycle it, burn it, etc…
However, back then, the middle '60s, Western Auto sold Recycled Motor Oil in quart cans for 19-cents a quart… It got cheaper by the gallon… I do not know how processed the recycling was back then, did it really get process or just run through a sieve to remove the solids… L 
L . . .
You also have to remember that back in the “day…” they also sold tire liners that were volcanized into an old worn out tire and then they pulled out the Tire Grover and burned “new tread” into the old tire… I believe the home-spun logic was, “Waste not, want not…”
I do not know if the photo below is for the recycled oil, but you have to ask, what is “Pure, Full Bodied Oil” made from…"
Here’s a classic-
Fairly common practice when I was a kid. That and killing weeds on the gravel driveway or just pouring it onto the gravel to cut down on dust…downright primitive and naive…
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Does spreading oil out on a flat surface in the sun cause it to be broken down by solar UV rays?
Not really, it’ll soak in to the ground. Any light component will evaporate, contributing to air pollution.
Back around 1989 or so, I was renting a house with 3 other buddies. One day I see one of the guys dig a hole at the back of the driveway, piling the dirt in a nice hump. Then he drives his Ranchero over it, with the LF wheel on the dirt pile, giving him enough clearance to crawl under there, drain the oil into the hole, spin off the filter (which went straight into the garbage), and put it back together. Filled the engine, backed the car off, shoveled the dirt back into the hole.
L . . .