Junk Yard Story

I happened onto the sadest thing yesterday.
When to the junkyard to look for some truck parts and there it was....just laying there....on it's side....in the dirt!

What was once a really nice looking Xj1100 front end tore apart just laying in the dirt, no carbs, and most of the good parts just torn into and dirt all through it!

Looked like it was a reasonably nice bike when it got to the junkyard.
I asked the propiator if he knew what he had..... Junk he said...I told him what that engine would fetch on E-bay and the front end.


I hope he's still kicking himself

 

It is sad that some of the slavage yards have good stuff laying in the mud and just go to crap in the elements over the years.
The local Kawasaki dealer here has a salvage yard out back and the bikes are all piled up and tangled together in parts of the yard. It makes it almost impossible to even get to a particular bike, let alone remove any part you may need. It took me over an hour to get a bike out of a pile to just get a pair of risers. There are alot of perfectly good parts to be had there, but after sitting out in the weather, they will all be turning to rust. Kinda makes me sick when I see all that stuff going to waste.
I could almost make it a full time job removing good usable parts and selling them on Ebay.

 

Mate I do make a living out of it and a damn good one )

 

Space, time and organization skills are needed in the wreaking industry but, as no doubt you are all well aware, the first two cost a heap of money and the third is as rare as a submarine screen door. It costs a boatload of money to operate a respectable salvage yard and most folks haven't the slightest clue about all of the taxes and fines that are levied on the proprietors. This causes them (the consumer) to be unhappy with the steep cost of used parts. It's got to come from somewhere 'cause cash just doesn't grow on trees. Tri-County here in Ventura costs a small fortune but he knows what he has, is very glad to help and expects to be paid for his time. Nothing wrong with that but it can take a healthy bite out of the bike fixing budget.

 

Talk about these trama's. As I've mentioned before here in Phoenix we have about the largest salvage yard I've ever seen, about 15 acre's and a 2 story warehouse he has, it's Bob's Used Motorcycle parts. I've gone there for near 20 years getting stuff and if I had the means, I'd sure love to buy his business from him.

They have no clue how much more money they could be making. But besides that the simple things you could do to make certain things last better.

My example is bikes gauges. They aren't something that holds up well to extreme sunlight, and here we have about the most extreme sunlight you can imagine, to get to temps like 120.

It's hard to find a set of gauges that are not all faded away, and the glass fogged over. He's let so much potential money making stuff like this go to waste when they could have been preserved for sale, now useless.

I was an engineer in the Semi-Conductor Industry for years, and we used to have to put these dark blue plasitc embedded woven, but very durable booties over your shoes before your cleanroom suit, and you can buy a box of like 300 of these booties for not much, I always thought "you know if this idiot would have just invested a little like that to throw over all the gauges still sitting on the bikes in the yard and when they come in, it would have preserved their gauges and could have been sold, now only for them to go to waste."

Simple idea's like this, not to mention all them parts pullers he's got sitting around, put them to work catelogging the bikes they have and parts, and get that place's inventory organized on computer so they could pull up and see if they have something to someone on a phone call. Because when you call the usual answer is, "duh, well I dunno, you can come down here and look through the yard yourself" ----- amazes me. Once in awhile they can answer something, but very rare. But like you guys say, usually you don't have intelligent people in the salvage business.

They have stacks if mixed rear racks and backrests, but do they think people can dedicate and entire day sifting through all that crap and hold it up against your bike to see if it might fit, he has no idea, and they didn't catelog what bike they took it off of, if they would have, they'd sell 100 times more stuff.

Boy if I could buy that place, and get like 15 guys humping on catelogging everything and get a webstore up and putting stuff on Ebay, I'd have that place making millions I bet.

 

I'd be interested in a position Russ!

 

Russ, sounds like you've got the right attitude. Here's an idea for you; why not start your own XJ salvage ops? One or two bikes would get you started. You could probably sell 60% of your parts right here and sell the rest on eBay. You could disassemble the bikes and not take up a whole lot of space, either!

 

I started my hobby becouse I could not live on the money I was earning in the UK repairing motorcycles.

I bought a couple of scooters for £50, dismantled them in my garden and put them on the net

With my proceedings I bought only 2 more but of a higher value and done the same.

I now have approx 250 motorcycles broken, 3 Staff and as you mentioned it is all in the storing but they are ALL racked labeled and sat in a nice dry unit.

I have one person dismantling and there are two that clean label check rack and photo the goods. only 15% of the job is breaking the bike it is all the other things that go with it that make it hard.

Also when you do break a bike do you
1) sell pipes complete, in two lots or many
2) do I remove the petcock or leave in the tank
3) do I sell the forks single or as a pair
4) What is the value of the goods

these are all things you will come up against and it varies between bike

 

Jaamba

It's nice to hear that there's a dedicated bike breaker in the uk. Whereabouts are you?... I'm in Southend and I can't find a decent bike breaker anywhere around here. I'm running a XJ700 based trike, but with 650 front end and clocks... I'd like to be able to spend all day wandering around a huge yard just looking for parts that I could adapt for the trike!

Sam

 

Great Job Jaamba, nice to see someone doing that. I'm sure your doing just fine, but to answer your questions if you want to know what I'd do, is.

Firstly, I think it would depend on your land space as damaged and unusable stuff like bent frames take up room, but starting out having room, I'd leave them complete but for each bike catelog what's good on it, and build a searchable file for each bikes stock # assigned.

Once your yard is full, I'd dismantle all bikes that come in wrecked and organize the parts to area's, bins, what ever.

Bikes that come in complete, just old the owner wanted to get rid of, or engine failure's etc. I'd leave complete.

As things go when you gain extra's of the same bike parts like tanks, good ones keep complete, dented damaged ones you could sell the petcocks & parts etc. seperate.

I think the simple point of it is, even though it's a junk yard business, get it organized and modernized. The one's I know of who are out there, sell ten times more stuff then the unorganized junk yards as far as cars go. Some even have websites, now that's the way to do it, it is a modern world and people have less time and are on the go more then in the 70's, so you can't expect them to expend tons of their time looking through junk piles anymore.

As far as value, most yards standard is half of retail. I personally think often that sucks, depending on what it is. The yards that you feel you got a decent price you'll go back to right. Reputation, recommendations & repeat business I think is 80% of either success or failure in business.

Just my thoughts

 

I agree with you there, Russ. I can't tell you how many times I've called a boneyard and had 'em tell me "I dunno, I'll get back with you," or had them tell me to come search for myself. A well-organized yard is worth it's weight in gold IMHO.

 

Time is money. Knowing what you have and it's condition is worth the few extra bucks it costs to have a staff on hand to perform these checks and organization.