Auto Auction Salvage Blog

Junk Yards Need Excavators

Obviously salvage cars and auctions need heavy machinery to move vehicles or even strip the vehicles for car parts or crushing. Here we can see an example of a Komatsu excavator being used to clear away old car parts from a scrap yard. These machines can save a huge amount of time and resource getting those heavy jobs done. Ironically getting undercarriage parts for these machines can be harder than the car parts they are stripping and moving. There are new excavator part suppliers out there but beware as prices can vary based on genuine parts and copies.

These machines to buy are often very expensive too with a long working lifespan, so even second hand ones will raise a good premium and as we have seen in recent salvage auctions, some of the wear parts associated with excavators are well in demand. Anyway here is the junk yard video.

Wear Parts

You have heard us talk about the excavators on sale as salvage lots bit recently there seems to be a lot of wear parts available too. Instead of buying the full vehicles in one go, there seems to be a market for second hand wear parts from these salvage vehicles that have found their way into salvage auctions.

I suppose these auction sites and yards need to get their money from any source available and one thing is for sure there certainly is a market for used wear parts, probably because of the value new. One wonders whether they find themselves going straight onto an excavator or whether there is some more margins being applied as these wear parts are sold on again.

The trucks that are required to transport these large items around is also impressive, although again there must be some involved in the shipping back to the warehouses where these parts will be stored. I very much doubt these wear parts will be left outside for the world to have access to.

There wee suggestions that maybe dedicated auctions should be put together consisting of wear parts and all excavator spares including rubber tracks which have a limited lifespan. Hey if it save money, we are all for it, after all that is what salvage auctions are for.

Where Have All the Cars Gone

The breakeryard industry in the UK are all complaining about the new scrappage scheme, suggesting that it is difficult to get hold of car parts for older cars now that owners are preferring to trade them in for a new car than get £100 down the scrap yard. The problem is the argument does not add up, because just as older cars are no longer available for parts, so the number of older cars on the road has reduced and therefore demand has gone. There is also an argument that states, why replace parts on a car you are just going to scrap anyway.

But funny enough this debate has also spread into the salvage market, blaming this scheme on the low availability of salvage cars. We just don’t understand what the fuss is about, how can cars of 10 years or older affect the salvage market which is normally based on much newer vehicles. Lets be honest, most salvage cars bought are under the 10 year mark, and otherwise it is just not cost effective. So where have all the cars gone?

Maybe our driving has improved and we no longer crash these cars, or maybe the insurance companies are repairing more themselves now. Who knows, we certainly don’t. What we do know is that in certain areas in the UK there is a shortage of good salvage deals going at the right price.

Mini Excavator Salvage

It is not just cars you get within salvage auctions up and own the USA and the UK but often building equipment also and recently quite a lot of mini excavators. So long as these are safe, these can be good for resale as they just need to be put on a trailer and transported to where they can used. However you need to be careful because getting holds of mini excavator parts can be tricky especially of you are after used parts.

Take rubber tracks for instance. 3 days solid and still no joy, these type of parts are probably better buying new anyway, but when you add the cost of the new rubber tracks to the cost of the salvage unit, the price starts to rocket up. Although quite easy to fix, the absence of good used parts, or even an online part service like they have with car parts, make the job harder.

So the advice is clear, if you are going to buy machinery like a min excavator, then first do your homework and find out where you can get these parts. If you can’t, then you need to factor in the cost of new excavator parts to the price you are prepared to go to at auction.