Armando Contreras Sr. unscrewed the molding from a Buick Regal while his son navigated a wheelbarrow full of sun visors and windshield wipers down aisles of junked Buicks. Armando Jr. was searching for ’85 LeSabres.
Instead of buying new parts to replace those stolen from his Buick, the elder Contreras chose to pay a $2 entrance fee to hunt for bargains among the 1,200 car carcasses on display at the U-Pick-A-Part auto wrecking yard at 7800 W. 61st Pl. in Summit.
So did 369 other shoppers who waddled over ice-encrusted aisles one sunny Saturday in January. In the summer, weekend traffic doubles.
Take Mark Sitter, who has frequented U-Pick-A-Part for the last year. Whenever he finds a usable part, a shiver shoots up his spine.
Sitter is fixing up a Cadillac limousine that he bought for $3,500 and plans to resell for a lot more. “This place is a gold mine,” said Sitter. “My wife didn’t understand until she saw me bringing home thousands of dollars worth of parts for only hundreds.”
U-Pick-A-Part is an upscale version of a junkyard and one of two self-serve facilities in the area. (The other is Circus Auto Parts in Riverdale.) Other yards stick to the more traditional approach of removing salvageable parts and scrapping the rest of the car, and some have even given that method a computerized twist.
But whatever form it takes, the junkyard is still a gold mine for the do-it-yourselfer.
U-Pick-A-Part’s user-friendly inventory setup allows customers to quickly locate vehicle makes and models and remove parts themselves. (Tools are on sale for those who forget theirs. Wheelbarrow rental costs $1.) Car and truck bodies are organized alphabetically by make in aisles 10 to 12 cars long and are neatly propped off the ground.
The do-it-yourself scavenging concept is new to Chicago but has been flourishing for years in areas of the country with milder weather, said Don Billish, president and founder of U-Pick-A-Part.
Billish first saw a pull-apart yard in 1989 in Florida, while checking out display racks for the Underwriter’s Salvage Co., an auction house based in Palatine where he was vice president of operations from 1988 to May 1991.
Exposure to the pick-a-part concept-putting cars out whole for customers to shop from-came at a time when Billish was considering opening an auto salvage business.
Billish was sold on the idea after visiting a chain of five yards in California called Pic-N-Pull.
With an initial investment of $500,000 to pay for inventory, a computer system to catalog it and rehabbing of the site-a closed wire processing factory-Billish set up shop in November 1991.
He chose Summit because the demographics fit what he was looking for-motorists who drive older cars that they fix themselves. Billish, who drives a ’91 Buick, doesn’t sell late-model vehicles.
“We reach out and touch those people who like to or have to tinker with cars. If they have accidents, a lot of the old cars don’t have collision insurance, and we’re a place where they can come and get a door or fender for 30 bucks,” Billish said.
Billish has put a dent in his competitors’ business by undercutting used parts prices by up to 90 percent. Sales for his first year in business exceeded $2 million.
Part of the credit goes to a $150,000 ad campaign last spring and summer. Billish also sponsored the Chicago White Sox, and every Friday the Pick-A-Part player of the week was announced on the radio during the games.
(Advertising with Billish’s favorite Chicago team, the Bears, was beyond his budget. But Billish, a true fan, has decorated the facility with Bear blue and orange, even outfitting his 20 employees in orange shirts and blue trousers.)
About 60 percent of his revenue comes from retail parts sales, and sales to gas stations, body, transmission and muffler shops account for 35 percent. The remaining 5 percent is generated by sales to the “core” business, which acts as a middleman for parts rebuilders.
“Heater cores, carburetors, starters, alternators, motors, transmissions all go to shops for rebuilding and end up at places like Trak Auto as a remanufactured part,” said Billish.
U-Pick-A-Part obtains more than 90 percent of the unclaimed cars from towing services, said Billish’s 24-year-old son, Joe, who runs the retail operation. Abandoned items-such as an album of Rev. C.L. Franklin’s Sermons, a book of John Donne’s poetry, free weights, crutches and bowling balls-found in the vehicles are put in the firm’s “Thrift Shop,” next to the “Tire Corral.”
Once a vehicle is picked clean, the body is sent to a scrap yard and crushed. The metal is then sent to a refinery, which sells it to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, said Richard Paul, manager of environmental health for the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, which represents the Big Three.
About 90 percent of the 8 million to 10 million vehicles that go out of registration each year go through this recycling and reuse process, pumping billions of dollars into the economy, said Paul.
Some customers, however, are dissatisfied with the lack of late-model cars at U-Pick-A-Part, which generally stocks 1986 and older cars.
Joe Janiszewski has gone there every weekend for about a year to find parts for his Chevrolet Blazer, which he bought used four years ago.
“All they need to do is get newer cars in here and get more upgraded,” he said, swinging a tool box en route to the trucks at the far left side of the 11-acre lot.
Customers such as Janiszewski can roam the U-Pick-A-Part yard because of a $28,000 CNA insurance policy Billish got through the Automotive Dismantlers and Recyclers Association, the industry’s trade group, based in Fairfax, Va., which has 1,700 U.S. members.
“When you let the public into the yard and work on the cars, the hazards are much greater than with other kinds of auto dismantling facilities,” said Thomas J. Grzelinski, CNA vice president of commercial affiliation marketing.
But Billish removes gas tanks and drains vehicles of all fluids into 55-gallon drums. Cars and trucks are hoisted onto a frame with a concrete base underneath to catch fallout so that none of the fluids seep into the soil.
Jeff Speicher, who is buying out his father’s share of Speicher and Gaylord Auto Wrecking Inc., an auto recycler at 1021 E. 143rd St. in Plainfield, has a different operation than U-Pick-A-Part’s.
Speicher takes salable parts out of cars and stores them in a warehouse on his 50-acre site. Among the quick sellers are General Motors V-6 and 4-cylinder engines, driver-side doors, front fenders, hoods, grilles and bumpers.
Speicher tracks parts the old-fashioned way, logging them into a book by hand.
When Speicher, 36, entered his father’s business in 1974, its revenue exceeded $1.5 million a year. Now it’s barely $900,000, he said. Foreign-made fenders and body panels made in Mexico and Taiwan selling for less than used parts, combined with the decline in mom-and-pop garages, has taken a bite out of sales.
The company obtains 60 percent of its 1,800 cars, trucks and buses from private sources and 40 percent at auctions run by salvage yards brokering cars totaled out by insurance companies. He focuses on domestic models.
When purchasing cars sold at auction, Speicher receives a salvage title. If he junks the car, he must first send the salvage title to the Secretary of State in Springfield, which transfers the document into a junk title, Speicher said while opening a file cabinet full of copies of them.
If Speicher sells the car whole, the buyer gets the salvage title. Once the car is fixed, it must be examined at one of the four Illinois Department of Transportation inspection stations, with the closest at 130th and Doty on the South Side. Receipts must be presented to declare the legitimacy of the “essential” parts used to fix the car. To determine whether any parts are from cars that have been stolen, inspectors trace all vehicle identification numbers, or VINs. This process has been in effect since 1985, says Jack Pecoraro, director of the Illinois Secretary of State’s Police Department.
Speicher also is one of the salvage operations that pays fees under a state program instituted in January 1992 that limits the stockpiling of tires.
Under the waste tire program, junkyards can accumulate up to 250 tires without getting fined, but they must pay a $100 annual fee to store tires and $70 a ton to dispose of those they can’t sell.
Under the law, each tire sold is taxed $1 and the proceeds go to the Illinois Departments of Public Health, for research on mosquitoes, and Energy and Natural Resources, the state Pollution Control Board and grants for businesses, says Dan Rion, spokesman for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Elgin Super Auto Parts, at 225 Willard Ave., Elgin, represents a third type of auto salvage operation. It uses a $40,000 computer system and the “Hollander on Disc” guide to track the millions of parts in its 20,000-square-foot warehouse. The firm was founded 24 years ago by Shelly Hoffman, and has grown into a multimillion-dollar business, selling parts to thousands of clients nationwide.
Like Speicher and Gaylord and U-Pick-A-Part, Elgin Super Auto Parts is family run. Three of Hoffman’s sons have followed in his footsteps.
Hoffman often stands at the front counter of the walk-in department at one of the three computer terminals and works the 10 phone lines. Within seconds, he can tell a caller whether the parts are available and offers to send them C.O.D. Without skipping a beat, he’s onto the next call.
While looking up an ’86 Mazda left rear taillight, he informed a visitor that it goes for $114 new and $75 used-but whispered that he would take $65, depending on volume sold.
Hoffman uses a walkie-talkie to alert Dan Rightmire, manager of his three-story warehouse across the street, to when customers will arrive to look at or pick up parts.
Carl Sappenfield, an accountant, was shopping for a 2.3-liter electronic fuel injected engine. Rightmire, an Army mechanic who served in a prisoner of war camp during Operation Desert Storm, escorted him into a room with 1,000 engines and 2,500 transmissions on four double racks. He showed Sappenfield an engine for $750 with 35,000 miles on it, which turned out to be double what Sappenfield wanted to spend.
As Sappenfield exited (he did return to buy the engine), Enrique Escamilla entered with a friend. He had bought a speedometer drive gear the day before and broke it while trying to install it in his ’86 Firebird. Rightmire had one of his workers get a new one and told him Escamilla how to install it.
The warehouse has 825 bins just for miscellaneous items, such as headlights, speedometers, temperature controls and mirrors. Brain boxes are stored 15 deep in 150 locations. Out back, three trailers contain seats.
Hoffman replenishes his stock with 250 cars a month, which he acquires at auctions. More than 1,000 cars, suspended on racks off the ground, are waiting to be dismantled and cataloged by Elgin’s three full-time mechanics.
Each is tagged with the car’s VIN and date of purchase.
Elgin specializes in late-model cars, which range in price from $200 to $6,000.
Elgin’s parts can cost half the new-part price. A front end with a suspension and grille can sell for $3,000. New, the parts would cost that much, Hoffman said, in addition to $3,000 for labor.
Hoffman said he is doing so well he plans by the end of this year to add another building with a showroom for customers.
