4 replies to this topic

[mab01uk]

AROnline: The disappearing joy of the old-school scrapyard.
"A scrapyard is a strange sort of memory vault – not the polished, curated kind you get at a classic car show, where everything is waxed, explained and roped off, but the other end of the story. The bit after the brochures, the finance agreements, the family holidays, the MoT advisories and the final FTP. The bit where cars stop being transport and become fragments.
Finding one was harder than expected. Google quickly produced a dispiriting selection of national car extraction services, followed by modern dismantlers that strip cars, catalogue the parts and sell them over the counter or online. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It is cleaner, safer, more efficient and probably better for everyone involved. But I didn’t want efficiency. I wanted to browse through a muddy place and look at car carcasses.
I wanted a grubby corner of the world that connected directly with being young, skint and hopeful, when a better steering wheel from a dead car felt like progress..."
The full article here:-
https://www.aronline...ool-scrapyards/

 

 

[sledgehammer]

Health & safety killed the old style scrap yard , and oil in the ground .

 

My regular scrappy started up in the 60's thru to about 2008 .

 

a tidy scrap yard , cars only 2 high & squared off in rows ,

 

He used to run banger racing , started a few clubs up , Worked with the police doing recovery etc ,

 

Nice bloke if you treated him right .

 

In the 90's he had to put in interceptors , drains , filters , covered workshop's etc , stop the mud / oil ,

 

He had to get newer cars in to strip , older classics just sat , no-one interested .

Took orders over the phone , tried to keep up . but in the end , rates , rent , wages etc , finished it ,

 

I think if it existed now , idiots would find a way to injure themselves anyway , 

Now it's all larger company's  , and Ebayers stripping crashed shells ,

I assume there are a few old yards about , but they are getting scarce .

 

 

Edited by sledgehammer, Yesterday, 09:04 PM.

[68+86auto]

I know a wrecker who was forced to move into the town by the council as he was running a business. About 20 years later he was forced to officially close down and move back out of the town due to all the things he had to comply with. That was 20 years ago and it has only got worse.

 

Everything is still sitting where it is at his place since when he moved it from the town.

[stuart bowes]

I guess also a lot of people just rent cars now don't they, no-one really owns them any more, or at least we're in the minority

 

because who's got time to learn skills like repairing your car when you could be spending all day posting pictures of your dinner on facebook and being an influencer lol

 

old skills die out in favour of new .. Skills?  (stretching that word a bit)

[evansisgreat]

 

 

Nice bloke if you treated him right .

 .

 

That sound so familiar! I think they must all be like that. I live in Dundee and there are 1 or 2 that have big concrete yards and they'll let you wonder round if you show up in overalls and hi viz.