Use it up, wear it out

The doors. If you need a car door for a popular late-model car, chances are pretty good you can find in at sun Auto.

Then use it up all over again

You and I recycle by the bagful.

Winston and Linda Ford recycle by the ton.

While we carefully separate our cans, bottles and plastics, they separate motors, doors and windshields.

The auto recycling business is not exactly new. There have been junkyards and used car parts places around forever.

Like the line in Jim Croce's "Big Bad Leroy Brown" - "meaner than a junkyard dog," there's a dog - Backus Boy - at Sun Auto Salvage in Norridgewock. He sounds like he'd happily tear a leg off anyone who walks too close to him while carrying a part.

But that's about the end of the similarities between this highly-sophisticated and computerized business and the old junkyards where rotting carcasses lay in the field like corpses until a greasy mechanic went out to get the part you needed.

In their office - busy to the point of being a zoo sometimes, Linda says - information about parts available and parts needed come from computer terminals servicing customers who want a part from Sun Auto's inventory or dealers offering a part which Sun Auto is looking for.

Auto recycling businesses like this one are a fairly new phenomenon. And they'd like people to know they aren't creating blight, they're helping to clean it up.

"I don't think people are fully aware of the recycling we do here," says Winston who with his wife Linda owns the business and serves as vice president of the Maine Auto Recyclers Association (MARA).

"People are really surprised at how sophisticated this business has become," says Linda. "I'm pleased to see how many women come in here now."

When Sun Auto and similar businesses get their hands on a vehicle, there will be no fluids leaking into the ground, no rusty hulks blemishing the landscape, no useable part or material wasted.

MARA and the Automobile Dismantlers and Recyclers Association (ADRA) are organizations, which are helping to upgrade both the image and the actions of auto salvage yards. The Fords are active members in both organizations.

Unfortunately, when towns are go after "junkyards" eyesores, they pass ordinances which are generally ignored by the guilty parties who hold no licenses or permits to start with.

What towns need to do, says Winston, is get their code enforcement officers after the real offenders.

The Fords are relatively new in the business, Winston went to Bentley College to study accounting and worked in that field for 15 years. Tired of office work, Winston went into his father's logging and lumbering business and later set up his own.

When the price of workers' comp and other factors adversely affected the business, they looked for something else. They drove by what had been Somerset Auto Salvage (which had gone on the market after former operators had been charged with operating a "chop shop," cutting up cars stolen out of state and selling the parts), made an offer and the rest is history.

Their plans for a continual upgrading and expansion were set back considerably by a serious fire in 1989 but the before and after photos of the area are still impressive.

Sun Auto is a late-model recycling yard, specializing in vehicles, which are no more than 10 years old. Most are purchased from insurance companies through auctions held periodically in Augusta, Saco or East Holden or out of state.

Some are live auctions and others are sealed bid auctions.

After an ice storm, says the Fords, "you get a good long list." A bad winter means good business for auto recyclers as a rule. But the economy has hurt them somewhat because people are either not fixing their cars at all or fixing their own rather than going to auto body shops or auto dealers, among Sun's best customers.

A good accident - from Winston's necessarily slanted point of view - is one in which "a four-wheel-drive pick-up with low mileage is hit in the hind end so I have all the nose piece (front end assembly).

"I might pay $2,000 or more for that."

When Sun Auto buys a vehicle, a computer program spews out 12, 14, 16 or more pages of information about what parts are available from that particular car or truck. It also tells them what extra information they will need to get for each part (how many amps an alternator is, for example).


At the push of a button they know what parts they have in stock, how many of each, how long each has been there and exactly where it is located.

A record of every part sold can tell a customer exactly what make, model and year of vehicle as well as the vehicle identification number should he need to know it.

Every part which first the computer and then the up-close-and-personal inspection deems marketable is stripped from the vehicle. What isn't for direct sale, is sold to a variety of other markets.

Like a well-picked chicken carcass, which ends up in the soup pot of the frugal housewife, the final remains are crushed and sold for scrap metal.

"Some cars I don't want. They aren't worth tearing down. I can dismantle approximately 300 cars a year. I'd rather dismantle cars I'm going to make some money on." Escor4ts, Tempos, Caravans, Cavaliers - those are the kinds of cars which provide the bread and butter for auto recyclers in this area.

However, Sun Auto will take care of old junkers, littering the landscape without charge.

"I keep Norridgewock clean. If I can get to it with a car carrier, I'll take care of it."

They sell their recycled parts to auto body shops, walk-in customers and other auto recylers.

"Our best customers are our competitors," he says.


But even parts for which there is no market at the moment are taken care of.

"There is a core charge of $5 to $50 for many parts," explains Winston. "You bring in the old one and get the fee back. That's rather than throw it out in the yard or take it to the local dump."

There are "core dealers" who arrive periodically to collect all such parts for reconditioning and later resale to auto body shops and new car dealers.

Aluminum is compressed into blocks and stacked, to be sold when the price is right. Hubcaps go into a pick-up bed until it's full ad sold "for little or nothing." Same with batteries. Oil is collected for donating to businesses with waste oil furnaces and so on.

As people understand how leaky old cars damage the environment and how recycling saves our resources, no doubt businesses like this one will become the rule and places like Sun Auto will be an even busier place. Right now they employ 10, in better times 13.

That's not counting Buckus Boy.