Doug, Origanly the place was a service center. We welded heads, weldup cranks, rebuilt engines, did a lot of work on Cat's and Farm and power stations/Generators both high freq. and low. We worked on just about everything. Initialy our parts purchaseing was just for the company. Soon we were selling parts outright to Farmers that wanted to do their own work and before we knew it we were in the parts business! Soon the parts business was out earning the repair side of the business.
Once the owner figured out how to out source the labor for less then what he could do it in house we were all out of work! I did some sales work for the company for about a month but just could not get used to it. THe machine shop sets idle. Now all the reman work is sent out.
We did not do "repo" work. I think some places would now call then recylers.