Speed Up The Salvage Yard Shopping Process With These Five Tips
Navigating a salvage yard looking for that one special part can feel like a nice way to spend time, but if you need to repair your car quickly, you may not want to wile away hours at the salvage yard. Want to speed up the process? Here are some tips to help:
1. Look for a salvage yard with a computerized inventory system.
When you are calling around to different salvage yards trying to find your part, ask each yard's rep if the yard has a computerized inventory system or not. In some cases, yards have notes about the types of cars they have, where they are located, and what parts they have. Looking through these notes manually can be time consuming. And once the rep has looked through the notes, he or she still has to find that car in the lot and make sure the part is still there.
In contrast, if the same shop has a computerized inventory set up, the rep can simply find the part in the computer system. Searching is faster as you can search by part name, vehicle make and model, or other search terms. Once the product is located in the computer, it's simple to find it out in the yard.
2. Find salvage yards with ready-to-go parts.
In some cases, salvage yards remove popular parts, and they keep them in a storage area. This can be especially useful and help to speed up the searching process. For example, some salvage yards store large sections of the auto bodies of antique or classic cars in their inventory rooms. In other cases, they may have transmissions, light assemblies or other popular parts removed and ready to go.
3. Consider removing the part yourself.
If the part you want is in the salvage yard and not on an inventory shelf, you typically have two options. In some cases, a worker from the salvage yard can remove the part for you. If you are trying to minimize the amount of time and effort you need to expend, this option may be ideal. However, in some cases, the salvage yard may insist on having a certain number of hours or even days to complete a request for parts.
In those cases, if you are in a big hurry, you may just want to consider volunteering to remove the part yourself. Weigh both options to see what saves more time in your case.
4. Investigate installation services.
Once you have the car part you need, you have to determine how you are going to install it in your car. Like the removal process, you can often choose whether you want the salvage yard to install the part for you or whether you want to install it yourself or have your mechanic handle it.
If the salvage yard's rep has time to install the part right away, that is usually the quickest option. However, if you know how to install the part or if you have a mechanic waiting and ready, it may be faster to grab the part and take it to your mechanic. This is especially true if the salvage yard cannot deal with the installation right away.
5. Find a specialist salvage yard.
Finally, one of the fastest ways to speed up the salvage process is to find a specialist yard. This is a salvage yard that tends to have the types and models of vehicles you need. For example, one salvage yard collected so many Cadillacs, it eventually came to be known by the name Cadillac Heaven. For someone looking for specific Cadillac parts, shopping at a salvage yard like that may be a lot faster than shopping at a salvage yard full of random stuff.
Keep these tips in mind when looking at different local salvage yards, like City Auto Wreckers.
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