Just Don’t Call It Junk : Image-Conscious Scrap Yards Prefer to be Known as Automotive Recyclers or Dismantlers

Say the word junkyard to Jeff Diament, 39, president of Elite Auto Parts in Sun Valley, and you’d better be smiling.

Diament specializes in late-model foreign cars such as BMWs, Jaguars, Mercedes-Benzes, Hondas, Nissans and Toyotas and gets indignant when people call asking if he’s in the junk business.

“We’re an auto dismantling yard,” he said. “Junkyards are usually associated with waste products, old refrigerators and abandoned cars. We pay anywhere from 20% to 40% of the resale value for a totaled vehicle. That’s not junk when the average vehicle I purchase is about $2,500.”

It’s the same feeling over at Marv’s Auto Dismantlers, which specializes in General Motors and Ford products from about 1983 on. A sign out front says, “This is not a junkyard. This is an automotive recycling and dismantling yard. May we please help you?”

“Auto dismantling and recycling are the new buzz words,” said Hal Marlowe, 67, executive director of the Valley Auto Dismantlers Assn. “They’re still called wreckers, auto salvage, auto recyclers and junkyards, but we all agreed on the word dismantlers.”

There are about 160 dismantlers in the San Fernando Valley area, all part of what Marlowe says is the 16th-largest industry in the United States.

The majority of cars come from insurance buyouts and auctions, and only a small percentage from individuals. “When a dismantler is done stripping a vehicle--some even recycle the antifreeze--they sell the carcass to true junk dealers” who shred or cube it, he said.

But if there has been one item that has been instrumental in bringing the dismantling business into the 20th Century, it is the computer, which 75% of dismantlers now use, they say.

Elite Auto has a totally automated inventory system and computer hookups throughout the West.

Jay Myers of Ace Auto and Truck in Sun Valley said, “We have telephone hot lines, and we’re computer-integrated with other yards now. We put requests on the machine, and people answer with price and availability.”

And Sam Schmidt of Marv’s Auto Dismantlers in Sun Valley said, “The computer can also generate reports on what items are getting requested as well as doing the accounting procedures. Plus it can do parts interchange. When you look up a part on a ’79 Camaro, it tells you what other years can be interchanged with it.”

But there are differences of opinion on how to make a living from the used, wrecked or retired vehicles. Owners say the business has gone in two distinct directions.

The newer type of dismantler buys cars--in some cases only specific models such as Fords or foreign cars or particular models such as Corvettes--and strips them of all parts. When the dismantling is done, the engine, transmission, wheels, tires, windows, quarter panels and electronics have been saved, leaving only a denuded shell to be crushed at the site or hauled away to be disposed of by a true junk dealer.

The parts are usually cleaned and inventoried. And the customer never ventures beyond the front counter. Savings range from 50% to 70% over new parts.

Then there are the traditional junkyards.

One of these holdouts is the 26-acre Aadlen Brothers Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley. Aadlen allows customers to roam its yard and find their own parts.

“We have no computers and no hot lines,” said L. (Smitty) Schmidt, 40, an Aadlen Brothers salesman. “Our basic business is not so much parts as it is iron. Moving iron and cutting cars. Strip ‘em first, then squash ‘em. We let the customer let his fingers do the walking.” Schmidt maintains that letting the customers do their own work provides them significant savings.

“If you could get 90% off the price of a part, would you get your hands a little dirty? We’re a junkyard,” he said. “Come on down and find the junk you want.”

Another serve-yourself company is Pick Your Part, which has four yards in the Los Angeles area--including one in the Valley--and three in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Anaheim-based firm says it tries to be a good neighbor by keeping its facilities clean, installing painted fences and planting trees. And like Aadlen, the company relies on walk-in business, not computers and hot lines.

But they still prefer the new term. “We’re an auto dismantler,” said Vice President Chris McElroy, 29, “not a junkyard.”

“We’re dealing mostly with 7- or 8-year-old middle-class-type cars,” he said. “We don’t have the higher-end cars. We sell cheap; a fender can go for $24 and an engine for $80.”

When a customer walks into Pick Your Part after paying a $1 admission fee and signing a liability waiver, he is surrounded by acres of automobiles on pedestals about two feet off the ground. The only items he’ll never find are car batteries--removed to prevent shorts--and tire jacks, taken away so no one can try to raise a car farther. Under the occasional watchful eye of Pick Your Part personnel, home mechanics, who bring their own tools, can remove any part and take it to the front counter to be charged.

Some things never change, however, including customers haggling over the price of a part.

Whether it works or not “depends on the attitude of the person who comes in,” said Myers of Ace Auto and Truck. “It aggravates me. We’re so far below what a new part would be, in most cases it’s fruitless to argue.”

Auto dismantler, junkyard, wrecker--with computerized inventory or none--they all try to avoid the stigma of handling stolen cars. Although local police departments say the majority of auto dismantlers do not deal in hot vehicles or parts, there is continuing temptation for thieves to try and sell to them. The best thing, say dismantlers, is to just stay away from someone walking in with parts.

Diament feels that almost all parts that anyone tries to sell him without paper work are hot.

“It has to be,” he said. “You don’t just have these parts loose in your garage unless you have a car that was wrecked. And if you don’t, what are you doing with a pair of T-tops from a Z?”

“We only buy cars with proper paper work, such as the pink slip,” said Schmidt of Marv’s Auto Dismantlers, who says his policy of not even looking at a car without documentation usually discourages thieves from talking to him. “The same people steal cars, and they get rid of them through the same sources,” he said. “And we’re not a source.”