7 / 24
SUE SPEAKING
ANTHOLOGY OF AUTO RECYCLING
Page 7
Recyclers News Press
I feel like the Lorax standing on the precipitous of
change. I’m wondering which way will the wind
blow. Will it be at our backs and propel us forward?
Or will it continue to blow in from the north, cold and
bitter, so that you have to lean in to move forward?
The media keeps telling us that the “now” genera-
tion yearns to be part of the environmental move-
ment. To turn back the tide that has placed the
greatest demands and created the most devastation
on the planet since mankind. And yet I wonder why
don’t they remember? Why don’t they think of us?
The Original Recyclers who paved the way and set
the example (that no one has followed) in closed
loop sustainability. A model still there to admire af-
ter 100 years.
Surely when Henry Ford had his epiphany to build
the Model T in a factory with interchangeable parts
so that the automobile would be affordable for the
common man he knew that used replacement parts
were part of that equation. Just as the Eli Whitney
innovation for the cotton gin revealed. The re-use of
existing parts made the most sense because used
parts were out there, available and affordable, just
like today.
John Vander Haag told me an incredible story about
the day that Roy Hollander showed up and asked
him to buy his book. Roy said something to the af-
fect of “John, spend $10 on my book that lists the
parts that interchange with one another. I need to
sell my book of interchange listings because I spent
so much time working on it I haven’t been selling
my parts” or so the story goes. I held that book re-
cently and thought about how necessity once again
was the mother of invention.
In 2008, I heard that used auto parts were 9% of the
market in repair parts used. I recently ran across a
report from 1989 that stated that in 10% of the re-
pairs used auto parts were utilized. That in only half
of the cases were used parts available. Surely now
with the international real time parts trading soft-
ware we have overcome that obstacle of parts avail-
ability. Yet somehow we’ve been forgotten. We are
losing market share not only to amateur parts pull-
ers on Craigslist but to aftermarket manufacturers
and insurance driven payment schedules that in-
centivize repair shops to buy new OEM parts at
twice the price of used parts. The 1989 study quan-
tified it. Yet the availability was still stated as the
most important factor which we read in to also
mean speedy delivery.
So how do we manipulate the wind to blow at our
backs? An age old question I’m quite sure but this
time we have the answer staring us in the face. Or
the Facebook at least and the possibilities make
me twitter.
May 11, 2015—More than one-in-three American
workers today are Millennials (adults ages 18 to 34
in 2015 ), and this year they surpassed Generation
X to become the largest share of the American
workforce, according to new Pew Research Center
analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
It is time to go viral. To make aware an entire gen-
eration that auto salvage exists and it is a viable
and sustainable cost saving way to repair cars with
onshore resources from local shops engaged in
green supply chain sourcing. It is time to buy used
auto parts.