I could spend days walking around here.
Crushing 2,000 old cars, NO!
- Thread starter WobblyElvis
- Start date
Is it even open to the public?
Is there any directory of this yard's content?
Is there any directory of this yard's content?
CleanSump
Site Donor 2026
Not going to look. Life is sad enough as it is.
I just finished my journey of repairing -> parting out -> getting a deposit to hold all the usable parts -> towing a car to a shop to part it out and swap with junk core -> emission credit salvage -> put in the lot for the guy who took all the part to buy it back -> merging 2 salvage car into 1 pristine car.
This whole ordeal ended up sacrificing 1 car to rescue 4 cars to decent conditions, plus a lot of manual labor (all together for all of us about 40 hours, all of us at least experienced DIY or professional mechanics with passion). The amount of man power and parts to restore all 4 cars by sacrificing 1 is probably totalling 100 hours, at $200/hr shop labor it would have cost $20k. $20k can buy you a 7 year old Miata with 50k miles on the odometer. $32k can buy you a NEW Miata.
This is only worth it if the cars are actually 1) low supply high demand, 2) cool, 3) in excellent condition and cared for in the past ownership.
This is not worth it for saving a bunch of neglected beaters with poor fuel economy, horrible driving dynamics, biohazard, rust, discarded everywhere for the same mechanical problem, and critical parts no longer available. Most of those cars in this video are just like that, unloved and neglected, with obsolete design, poorly build, unenjoyable to drive, and no demand in the market. Just because they are old doesn't mean they are collectible.
When a lot of people ask me to restore my car instead of junking it, they want me to pay for it (calculated to be about $7k to do it right) and then sell it for market price (about $3k). When I ask them to buy the core car and do it themselves, they almost always say I am asking too much because they know a friend who only paid $800 for a beater and is trying to restore them slowly.
This whole ordeal ended up sacrificing 1 car to rescue 4 cars to decent conditions, plus a lot of manual labor (all together for all of us about 40 hours, all of us at least experienced DIY or professional mechanics with passion). The amount of man power and parts to restore all 4 cars by sacrificing 1 is probably totalling 100 hours, at $200/hr shop labor it would have cost $20k. $20k can buy you a 7 year old Miata with 50k miles on the odometer. $32k can buy you a NEW Miata.
This is only worth it if the cars are actually 1) low supply high demand, 2) cool, 3) in excellent condition and cared for in the past ownership.
This is not worth it for saving a bunch of neglected beaters with poor fuel economy, horrible driving dynamics, biohazard, rust, discarded everywhere for the same mechanical problem, and critical parts no longer available. Most of those cars in this video are just like that, unloved and neglected, with obsolete design, poorly build, unenjoyable to drive, and no demand in the market. Just because they are old doesn't mean they are collectible.
When a lot of people ask me to restore my car instead of junking it, they want me to pay for it (calculated to be about $7k to do it right) and then sell it for market price (about $3k). When I ask them to buy the core car and do it themselves, they almost always say I am asking too much because they know a friend who only paid $800 for a beater and is trying to restore them slowly.
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I just found out recently that an online used parts reseller bought the local u-pull and emptied the whole lot last summer. Sad, there was lots of rusty gold in there. I hope they are reselling what was there and not just stopping competition.
It would be a nightmare selling that piece by piece or car by car. PandaBear gets it. Entry level antique restoration brings out dreamers without resources. "I want the one in the middle, can you move four cars out of the way? You mean I have to I pay the tow guy to do that? Who's a good tow guy to move my car 400 miles one way, I'm paying a dollar a mile. Can you apply for a lost title for me? Do you have keys? I need you to knock $500 off because the numbers don't match."
U pull lot typically only keep a car for a finite period of time. They will empty out the oldest rows and crush what is not picked by then, then buy new cars to fill them, and repeat. Rusty gold would have been picked by the time they crush the cars, likely a month or two later.
More and more cars are sent oversea to be fixed instead of locally fixed or junked. In a way I think it is more eco-friendly, but in a way it means if the cars have no international market and cost too much labor to fix, those parts would be worthless. I don't blame the owners or insurance for junking them. I blame the design, the manufacturers, and the trend toward larger more complicated cars that cannot be kept without too much work. A small Corolla would always be worth within reason for commuting, but a large SUVs that "may one day tow a boat", probably would be scraped before they ever tow one.
Those old vehicles will be crushed, scraped for metal and maybe that metal will be made into new vehicles or for constructing data centers, who knows.
4wd
$50 site donor 2026
Think I’ll just live vicariously watching the Martin Bros …
You are probably right about most U-pulls having a fast turn over but not this one. Cars moved but you had 6-8 months before it was a shell, while others sat for years. They were letting a lot of exporters in to take most of the good stuff i noticed the last few times I was there. Now the next closest one is about an hour and fifteen, which stinks as it was 30 minutes to the old one. This place was gold for my 90s GMs, Honda and Ford that I've owned. Hopefully the next one will too.
