Went to the scrap yard today, cleaning out my brothers blowed up chevy engines he left behind. what do I see setting there is a 53-54 dodge pick up that some one had began restoration on,it was a five window cab with no rust,split hood type, all the glass looked new as there was no fogging or stone chips. drivers door and fender was bent but minor , looked like it had been opened to far but opened and closed fine, box sides had no rust at all rear fenders had some small holes in the top, bed strips were even there , no motor or transmission. cab had a couple of boxes of dash a outer trim parts. The guy got a whopping $157. bucks for it. It even had a title!!! The yard would not sell it or even parts as the have no dealers license to sell used vehicles. I even resorted to begging. No deal . What a shame .

We had a local scrap yard around here that sold some parts to some guy once. The guy was Fed, and was on a sting opperation. They shut him down instantly, brought in the full team, and went over everything in the yard looking for "missing and presumed sold" parts with out the required license. They went over his books with a fine tooth comb. When they finally got done with him, he had been shut down for over a year, paid a huge fine, and may have even done a little jail time. The Government doesn't mess around with people doing things with cars they don't have the proper license for, they go for the kill.

So, lets say your in the scrapping business, ask your self, is making a few bucks selling some stranger a few parts worth your lively hood? Probably not. If the guy has only a scrap license, then scrap is all he can do. To sell parts, he needs an auto parts salvage license. Two different licenses, both with a different set of rules covering what they can and can not do.

Then on top of all that, to most scrap guys I know, the whole world is a big scrap pile waiting for them to process. The only value anything has it determined by its weight. Gene

I can see the scrap yards point as you say. The scrap pile is their living, it's just a pile of metal to them. To bad the owner of the truck didn't contact a local car club or take it to a swap meet/ car show to try to sell it off before resorting to scraping it for $157. bucks. Not that I needed another project , but heck I would have gave him $500. for it, but he probably would have wanted more.

I hear what your saying, but its possible the guy tried to sell the thing and met up with a bunch of people that wanted to make payments or maybe even never had anyone show any interest.

Sometimes dealing with people is a pita. One time several years ago I had a 66 Coronet wagon I was trying to sell. It was licensed and insured and drivable. The car had a poly 318, with the trailer towing package, so it had the 26" 3 core rad, a 3:23 sure grip 8 3/4, a small block 727 with about 50K on a rebuild, and was converted to disc brakes. I figured at that time it was worth %300-$400 in parts alone, but was only asking $200 for it. Some jerk called me several times insisting I was going to sell it to him for $75. It was worth more then that as scrap, and I told him that. After about 2 weeks of him constantly calling me, and me telling him the same story, he told me I should junk it then! So I pulled off some parts I had room to store and scrapped the car out. I got a little under $200 for it across the scale. The next day when the guy called still trying to get me to sell it for $75, I told him I scrapped it out like he told me to do and I got $200 for it. Then he wanted to know if I kept any parts, and where it went. I told him I scrapped it all, and watched them crush it. Its too bad, there was a lot of good parts that was still on that car, but I didn't want to deal with that jerk.

There is a limit to what people will tolerate, and too many people push too hard. There are a lot of guys out there that think that because I'm junking something out, I should just give it to them so they can make money from it. Gene