Auto Salvage Yards – How Does It Make Money? We all know that the automobile industry is one of the major contributors to the global economy. Every year the automobile industry launch millions of cars for their customers, but do you know what else they are making alongside? A lot of waste! Yes, that’s right, every year, when we witness the boom in the automobile industry. We should also bear in mind about waste. Almost all the automobile manufacturers market their vehicles as highly environment-friendly and safer to decompose.
But do you know what comes in handy when we talk about automobile waste? An auto salvage yard that takes your old junk and tries to get some money out of it. With the increasing reliance on automobiles, the need for creating more auto salvage yards is a must. America is one of the biggest consumers of automobiles and thus requires some solid strategies to handle auto junk. That is why the automobile industry in America is considered a crucial factor for the proper recycling and decomposition of auto junk. According to reports, the annual growth in the automobile industry from the year 2014 to 2019 is 2.8%, with total revenue of 6 billion in the year 2019.
But what an auto salvage yard is and how they make money out of broken and rusty auto junk? Wondering or curious? What to know the profit stream of an auto salvage yard? Then keep on reading the article to know everything about it.
What Is An Auto Salvage Yard?
Have you ever wonder what happens to a car when it completes its useful life? Once the automobile remains no longer useful, it’s sent to the auto salvage yard. An auto salvage yard is a place which takes the used, junkie and wrecked vehicles for recycling or refurbishing purpose.
All auto salvage yards will accept almost every vehicle that gets off the road due to any factor, including accidents, age, or any mechanical problems. But being off the road does not mean you cannot make money out of it. An auto salvage yard works with other salvage or used cars organizations to get a high customer base. You can witness it by asking your local mechanic, and he will point you to the nearest auto salvage yard.
How Do These Auto Salvage Yards Make Money?
A vehicle might get out of order or not able to run on the road due to one of many reasons, but that does not mean all of its parts get wrecked or useless.
- Acquisition Of The Automobile:
As mentioned above, an auto salvage yard works along various similar organizations to get used, wrecked, or out of order cars easily. The customer might drop the car at the salvage yard by themselves, or the yard owner can tow the car to the yard.
- Pre-Treatment:
When the car or any automobile reaches the salvage yard, it goes through the Pre-treatment phase. In this phase, all the fluids are drained out of the car along with various other things, including tires, gas tanks, batteries, and many more. The pre-treatment is essential before the disassembling process to make the dissembling process safe.
- Disassembling And Refurbishing:
Once the salvage yard dealer takes out all the fluids out of the automobile, the next step is to take out all the useful parts to be refurbished and resale.
- Selling The Refurbished Parts:
As we have mentioned earlier, not every car is completely out of order. However, there is a variety of useful parts still present to be refurbished and resale — for example, the tires, engine, floor mats, windows, and many more. The salvage yard dealers remove the useful parts from the car and sell them to the metal scrapers.
It entirely depends on the auto salvage yards and the facilities it owns that how it evaluates the vehicle and make money. Some salvage yards leave the parts inside the vehicle for the customers to find and purchase, while others remove the parts, clean, and refurbish them. After that, they segregate them for the clients to go to a specific area for a particular part.
You might be amazed, but there is a market for every part of the vehicle, including seats, mats, tires, console, and mirrors. According to a survey, every vehicle on the road is made of 25% of an old vehicle.
- Money From Scrap Metal:
Once the vehicle is disassembled, and every useful part is removed, it is then sold to the scrap metal for the recycling purpose. According to a report, aluminum and steel are the most recycled material of an automobile. And you can sale your metal scrape at 25 to 50 cents per pound.
- Money From Cooper:
You can also earn quite a money from selling the cooper obtained from the vehicles. The alternators and the starters are the significant parts that supply power in the vehicles. These two parts made of steel and copper and thus can be sold for some handsome price.
- Glass:
A glass takes about 1 million years to decompose. So wouldn’t it be prudent to reuse it instead of making new? But the recycling of vehicle glass is entirely different from the bottles recycling as it uses a Polyvinyl butyral layer to prevent it from shattering at once. But if the glass is intact, it possesses a significant selling price.
- Catalytic Converters:
Catalytic converters convert the harmful pollutants into less harmful ones and thus save the environment. But do you know the catalytic converters contain extremely precious items like palladium and platinum, which are in great demand in the electronics and jewelry industries? But you require specific tools to extract these metals from the catalytic converters.
- Tires:
Almost 80% of the tires that are discarded get recycled every year. Due to their durability and extremely toxic composition, tires are the most harmful waste. But why to decomposed when you can earn money from them? Then salvage yard dealers sell the tires to various buyers, including the local tire sellers, recycling facilities and local retread facilities, and many more.
- Vehicle Oil:
As discussed earlier, the salvage yard dealers take out the oils and other fluids out of the vehicle before starting the dismantling process. Here the great news is the used oil present in the car can be used again. Although the process is costly, you may find various dealers in the market buying used oil to recycle it into useable ones.
- Car Batteries:
Almost 99% of the batteries are renewable. This enables the salvage yard dealers to get a good sum by selling the used car batteries, or if you have the facility available, you can recycle them and sell them in the market.
Although the salvage yard industry might seem a good option to get rid of your broken, out of order wrecked vehicle, what you do not is these yards are making a great amount of money by utilizing the useless vehicles and their parts.
So the next time you stuck by the entrepreneurship idea, why not tap the opportunities available in the salvage yard dealership? Wouldn’t it be fun to make money from something useless for someone else? Or, as we say, someone’s junk is someone’s treasure!