By Mark Fischenich
MAPLETON — By the time Cash for Clunkers ended in late August, B & R Auto and Truck Recycling in rural Mapleton was nearly overflowing with junkers.
For a while, they closed the north gate to the salvage yard on the edge of Beauford so they could park clunkers in the driving lanes. They’d run out of room everywhere else on the sprawling yard.
“It got to the point where we didn’t know where we were going to put the vehicles,” said B & R owner Randy Davis.
More than two months later, about 300 of the 400 cars and trucks are still on hand. Davis isn’t worried about getting all the cars crushed by February or March as required by federal law.
“We’ll make the deadline,” Davis said.
Other salvage yards — especially those in metropolitan areas that were inundated with the 700,000 clunkers traded in nationwide — are wondering if they’ll be able to get all the cars crushed in time. One Twin Cities company still had 5,000 last month and is desperate for an extension, facing the threat of a $15,000 per vehicle fine if the deadline isn’t met.
But Davis joins other auto recyclers in calling for an extension, mainly because he doesn’t want good used car parts to be crushed and partly because he’d prefer not to be forced to meet a deadline that falls in the depth of a Minnesota winter.
The cars and trucks without much potential for providing spare parts are the ones that have already been crushed at B & R. The remaining vehicles have useful parts Davis would prefer to remove and have some car owner reuse.
The program aims to put the gas guzzlers out of commission, so the cylinder blocks and cylinder heads can’t be reused. But other parts on the vehicle can — if there’s enough time to salvage them.
“There’s going to be a lot of good parts cars out here that are going to be crushed (if the deadline isn’t extended),” he said. “And that’s a waste.”
Program gave boost
The Cash for Clunkers program gave owners of certain gas-guzzling vehicles a federal rebate of up to $4,500 if they traded their old car or truck in for a more fuel-efficient vehicle. Auto dealers used companies such as B & R to clear the clunkers from their lots.
The point of the program was to boost the economy, particularly the fortunes of auto manufacturers and dealers, while reducing air pollution. Davis said the program had a positive impact on his business, prompted a couple of employees to be added to the payroll and kept his existing employees hopping.
Truck driver Mike Smith, for example, worked daily, often from about 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. picking up clunkers from dealerships along with keeping up with B & R’s regular business.
“Basically, he was running seven days a week,” Davis said.
John Davis, the owner’s son, pitched in with some clunker hauling as well. And Davis’ wife, Sarah, handled the extensive paperwork, often plugging away at the clunker documentation until midnight.
Even now, a 9-inch pile of clunker forms were stacked on Davis’ desk.
“The guys in the processing area felt like they were never getting ahead. It was crazy,” Davis said. “It’s starting to wind down now.”
Junk and not so junky
Davis figures B & R got virtually every Cash for Clunker vehicle from Mankato to Fairmont.
Others may not have wanted to deal with the paperwork. And B & R, which sells parts across the nation, could handle the mass quantities that the federal program created.
“I took everything I could,” Davis said.
That ended up being about triple what was originally envisioned as Congress expanded the program when its popularity outstripped the $1 billion originally allocated for the rebates.
The program did what was intended and it took some truly dilapidated cars off the roadways.
“Some cars were totally junk,” Davis said. “We were like, ‘Thank God they got rid of them.’”
But Davis also saw too many good cars going to a premature death.
“It was a shame,” he said. “There were a lot of very nice vehicles. ... They could have easily got another 100,000 miles on some of those. I mean very, very easily.”
So Davis hopes the parts aren’t wasted by a deadline that comes unnecessarily soon. There should be no concern that the gas guzzlers will end up back on the road because their engines have been flooded with a sodium silicate solution — better known as “liquid glass” — that permanently seizes the motors.
A board member of Automotive Recyclers of Minnesota, Davis said he and his colleagues have no idea why the six-month crushing deadline exists.
“The motivation for the six months? Nobody knows, to tell you the truth,” he said.
Meredith Salsbery, communications director for Congressman Tim Walz, said Walz’s office has heard the concerns of the salvage yards and their association and has inquired about an extension with the agency that oversees the program.
The law passed by Congress authorizing Cash for Clunkers didn’t include the deadline. It was added by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when the specific rules were written for the program, Salsbery said. The agency should be able to extend it without congressional action.
Like Davis, Salsbery said there doesn’t seem to be much point in having the tight deadline for crushing the vehicles.
“The big concern about the six months was fraud — people driving them off the lots,” Salsbery said, noting that the concern was dealt with when the engine oil was replaced by the sodium silicate. “They’re not workable anyway.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.
