Moving Upscale

Junkyards as recycling plants

Who these days is immune to the classic American impulse toward self-improvement? Now it has infected the owners of those grimy, slightly disreputable repositories of rusting old machinery known as junkyards. They are sprucing up operations, organizing merchandise, buying computers, even hiring consultants and promoting an industry association. Says Barry Isenberg, head of a California firm that advises junkyard owners: "No question about it. The last backward industry in the U.S. is now shaping up." The purveyors of used parts are moving so far upscale that they now want to be known as "auto dismantlers and recyclers."

Take Robertson's Auto Salvage in Wareham, Mass. Customers do not have to step gingerly around pools of crankcase oil or pick through piles of grimy auto carcasses to find a distributor or transmission. Instead they consult with necktie-wearing salesmen and browse among neatly stacked trays of labeled parts. Robertson's has a pert receptionist, an IBM computer and a company plane, a Beechcraft Baron twin-engine. Sales last year: $6 million.

Such upwardly mobile auto-dismantling and -recycling plants are a product of hard economic times. Junkyards are prospering because car owners are keeping old clunkers longer and fixing them with used parts. Although fancier surroundings can mean fancier prices, junkyard discounts can still be considerable. A power-steering pump for a 1978 Chevrolet V-8 costs $150.74 when bought new from a dealer, yet it can be found at a junkyard for about $30. As a result of such savings, sales at the 11,200 junkyards in the U.S. rose 10.4% in 1981, to more than $4 billion, and increased again last year, though by a smaller amount. Most people, however, still shy away from junkyards; only 3% of the population visit them regularly.

Running a newfangled junkyard is no shoestring operation. Lakenor Auto Salvage in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., has completed a $3 million building program that includes lounges for customers, computerized inventory and a 20,000-sq.-ft. warehouse. Jim Hanlon moved his Kansas City yard from the wrong side of the tracks to a $280,000 four-acre lot in an industrial park, where he built an air-conditioned office building and showroom complete with video games for waiting buyers. Southern Nevada Auto Parts near Las Vegas employs six licensed mechanics so that it can install used parts as well as sell them. It also spends up to $7,000 a month on radio and television commercials.

Some junkyards are beginning to resemble auto-parts boutiques. All Foreign Auto Salvage in Berkeley, Calif., deals only in parts for imported cars. A&B Auto Salvage in a Los Angeles suburb specializes in parts for Mercedes-Benzes. Such concentration requires that operators become more creative in scavenging for inventory. Instead of buying whatever wreck is towed onto the lot, many yards now seek out needed models at wholesale salvage auctions. Customers get better service too. When a shopper arrives on the lot, he does not have to wait while a grease-stained worker uses an acetylene torch to cut a part out of a rusting hulk. Rather, he finds the pieces already separated and ready for sale as "predismantled, previously owned parts," not, certainly, as junk. . This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.