says Wilbert. “Auto recyclers need to embrace the social platforms of the next generation and make an impact now on our future customers. Educate them that there is another option to locate and replace needed auto parts to repair a vehicle. To make a personal connection with the next gen, we host many school tours annually to showcase our facilities and educate the youth.”

“Searching for and ordering parts online is one of the biggest changes of our day,” says Cox. “Customers are searching the internet for a variety of sources of auto parts and are only calling if you have what they need. I believe it is important for our future success to be con- nected to trading groups, which gives you the ability to show more parts available in order to get that call or visit to your facility. Furthermore, because of their market conditions, body shops and repairers are expecting near-perfect used auto parts. We have to embrace indus- try-driven quality control procedures to help raise our standards to insure the best used part is sold to our customer.”

“Distribution, in my opinion, will be critical to our industry going forward,” says Cox. “Many years ago, auto recyclers typically didn’t buy parts from other recy- clers. Now, trading partner groups are more common, but they are all so diverse. We have to create a unified distri- bution flow and the industry has to move to widely held

quality standards. Same descriptions. Same packaging. Same quality. As an industry, we worry about return rates, but I believe if we sell our customer enough parts, that won’t matter. Would you rather have healthy sales with a small return rate or no sales at all?”

Industry organizations work to help unify auto recy- clers and take the lead with quality measure standards. “We are active in industry organizations,” says Petrie.

“As a member of the Automotive Recyclers Association, we are able to communicate with others doing what we do to develop better business practices. Why reinvent the wheel? We also are always looking for vendors to help provide us the proper tools and outlets to be successful and keeping up with trends.” CTV Inc. has been a member of the ARA for many

years. “My dad served on ARA committees and we have always supported it, as well as FADRA. We benefit from the knowledge we receive from ARA Conventions. ARA provides a common ground, a thread to our industry, and brings people together with the goal of benefiting the industry overall.”

Caryn Smith, editor of Automotive Recycling, has been covering the industry for over 20 years. She has written for other related recycling publications, providing insight and trends.

Automotive Recycling

March-April 2019 //45