CHANGING TIMES - A Salvage Solution Story
Cumberland auto scrap yard brings the business into the 21st century
From Projo.com on Jan 11, 2007
CUMBERLAND - The blue-painted aluminum warehouse that is the new home of Bill's Auto Parts contrasts sharply with the careworn, pencil thin, brick building sitting next door, which was the auto recycler's home for close to 75 years.
The automatic sliding doors on the newly opened warehouse whiz sharply open, disclosing a brightly lit, soaring ceiling. A massive counter lined with flat screen monitors spans nearly the length of the interior.
The space, painted bright blue and yellow, is clean and spare.
This stark departure from the cramped, dimly lit space the business previously occupied was intentional, the company president, Paul D'Adamo, explains.
Because while behind the slick, new warehouse sits an expansive, dusty yard with close to 600 cars, trucks and vans, all neatly arranged in rows for scavengers to pick and pry apart - the bread and butter of the business a generation ago - the game, like the physical structure, has changed.
Bill's Auto Parts, like other companies in the auto salvage business, is moving away from its dependence on a massive stock of half-gutted wrecks and mangled rides in order to compete in a global auto parts industry.
Increasingly, newer-model vehicles are being stripped bare before ever reaching the junkyard. Their most valuable parts are cleaned, tested, inventoried, and documented on a host of online databases and websites, ready for shipment anywhere.
And don't expect to find that elusive part for that turn-of-the- century junker sitting in your garage - it's not here anymore.
"We are not letting cars sit around in the yard as much as we used to," D'Adamo said. "The idea now is to get the cars in and get them out fast. We're like a factory, but in reverse. We're taking things apart, not assembling them."
Bill's Auto Parts was founded in 1932 by the late Bill Gregory, who purchased the red-brick building that served as its storefront and main office until last year. Arthur and Carolyn Murphy bought the business in 1987, shortly after Gregory's death, and over the years began to clean up and organize the junkyard, which D'Adamo estimates had close to 1,200 cars at it peak.
D'Adamo, the couple's son-in-law, gradually took over management of the operations, and began a major overhaul and direction change for the business.
Under D'Adamo, a past advocate for state legislation to better regulate the industry, the business has taken an eye toward being environmentally friendly.
The company designed a facility that would allow it to dismantle vehicles and store toxic chemicals drained from them while being able to inventory parts, something that was impossible in the former space.
D'Adamo's advocacy work and the company's planned facility earned the company the Environmental Council of Rhode Island's 2006 Senator John H. Chafee Conservation Award, which is given out annually to organizations and individuals who exhibit outstanding stewardship of the environment.
Groundbreaking for the new, 10,000-sq.-ft. building, a half-a- million-dollar investment, began last July, and construction finished last month. The old brick building will be torn down by next month.
In order for an auto salvage yard to remain competitive, it needs to turn around cars faster than in the past, said D'Adamo, who is also president of the Auto Recycler's Association of Rhode Island, a nonprofit organization of state-licensed salvage yard operators.
Businesses need to justify the cost of a vehicle sitting on a lot versus the parts sales it generates, which typically taper off within the first two to three months of its introduction into the yard stock.
Oftentimes, it is more cost efficient to scrap an underselling car since prices for scrap metal continue to be high.
Many yards, including Bill's Auto Parts, are investing heavily on late model cars, 1998 and newer, and whittling down on the diversity of make, models and years it carries, D'Adamo said.
And in a parts industry that includes factory-made and after- market parts, which are parts made by manufacturers other than the original carmaker, businesses must now clean, test, and offer warranties on parts, things that D'Adamo said were unheard of a decade ago.
The salvage yard parts still undercut after-market and factory parts prices, but customers today expect the same quick service from salvage yards that they get from those retailers.
"Businesses need to have more stock on the shelf," D'Adamo said. "It's a big parts world out there and customers are less willing to go out and hunt for a part and pull it themselves."
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