welcome to recycled Idaho for to recycling industry veterans bread Eckart Nick Schneider explore Idaho businesses and organizations that are putting in the work to keep Idaho environmentally and economically viable at the same time take a listen to how these entrepreneurs business owners and operators making things happen in the great state of Idaho on this fruits on the ground I get a walk with Joe Cheatham the owner of north per day auto salvage make sure to check this out on our youtube channel and also look for our follow up podcast where me and Brett sit down with Joe all right guys on this boots on the ground we’re over in Ontario or again with North Firday Auto Salvage and the owner Joe Cheatham how you doing Joe good how are you good it’s nice for me to finally get here right I’ve never actually been here you know are one of our it’s good to have you over here to show you around one of our main guys Jay Milligan helped set up your crush jobs which we’re doing right here right now I didn’t know how to buy old cars that are gonna

get crushed right right you really yeah we yeah we try and you know recycle these parts for people to keep their vehicles on the road you know so you know we’ve got a team of people that take care of the parts they test everything to the best of our ability and we have an ASE certified mechanic on duty okay and he makes sure that our other dismantles get everything running and so that they can test them to really find out you know what is the quality of those parts before we some is somebody so we can grade them correctly God shave every does every auto salvage to do that not every Artie side yard does that some places just you know look at it kind of look at the condition of the stuff and then it’s like take it as is and it’s but you know we want people to have faith in the part they’re buying otherwise why would they buy a used part we don’t have any faith in it and where are we going in – this is our dismantling shop right here okay thank you this is where all the magic

happens okay great so you’re no inventory so yeah we bring when we bring the vehicles in these guys put them on the hoist they they run the motors run the trade you know put the transformations in and gear check all the transformations they drain all the fluids look at the quality of the fluids in the engine and transmission remove the fuel tanks remove all the fuel you know and then we racked the the good engines we put them on shelves transmissions as well the core ones we throw in a United metal being out there okay and then roll the next over then these go out to the to the yard to be put you know in rows until we can sell miscellaneous parts off of them and and we usually keep you know some cars will keep for a year some cars three years some cars longer depending on what’s on them and how well they part out and then we give them you guys new crush them I assume you’d kind of check your inventory so I give you have tan of the same car oh absolutely it can kind of crush some

of them absolutely nowhere absolutely yeah we can’t we’re constantly going through the inventory system and looking at what we have too much of not enough of and you know it’s and it’s constantly changing do you know with the demand on yeah as vehicles get older some demand goes up on some things and demand goes down on others yes I’m just become obsolete yeah exactly and like the little I dunno about it like that is a very important aspect is keeping your inventory fresh and what you need for sure yeah yeah you’re absolutely you’re constantly buying constantly looking at what the demand is you know there are certain vehicles when some vehicles reach a certain age then you know their engines transmissions the drive frames start to fail at a certain value so then you’re starting to look at vehicles that have those to replace those parts for people and that gives them people a lot more affordable option absolutely it’s yeah you know they’re gonna use part they’re gonna save sometimes 50 to 150 percent on a used part over a new part oh wow yeah it’s a significant saving yeah great so when

they pull the two engine the engines and the transmissions they put we have a wash bay right here okay to be our wash rack do we recycle all the water okay yeah so here’s our over here’s our pressure washer they put it on here the water goes in here into a tank back there okay and then a company comes and pumps off that waste water and that waste water is recycled so all of our all of our oil we put in we have a clean burn waste oil furnace up here so they we recycle all of our oil okay and all the gasoline and diesel we give to the employees and put in the yard rigs okay great so everything’s recycled we keep it green that’s awesome this is the hold area wait cars waiting to be inventoried so these vehicles are not inventoried yet we have an inventory system the guy comes out with a computer and inventories all the sellable parts off these vehicles before they go in the shop and then once they’re dismantled and then it goes out into out into the yard here okay so here different row in

the two the different rows and we try and we try and keep them divided by make and model as best as we can you know when we get super full sometimes it doesn’t work out perfectly but you know it’s mostly organized by by you know we got imports and we got okay Chrysler and so on you mix your sedan with your truck yeah we yeah it’s mostly just by manufacturers so all the GM cars and pickups are in one row the Ford cars and pickups are in one row just because you know the yards it’s a big yard it’s 18 acres but you still you know you you can’t quite because it takes so much to move and place a car you know you don’t want to keep moving stuff around just organize it cuz that you know that takes away it costs a lot to have someone go out here and reorganize everything so once it’s put in its place if there’s an empty hole here in this row for a pickup and not missiles so they just end up kind of getting getting a little bit mixed up but yeah it makes

sense so you said you’re on 18 acres 18 acres yeah has it always been 18 acres no we started in a in 1983 with just five acres in like 200 cars when I took over in 99 we still only had the five acres and 200 cars and now we’ve got eighteen acres and right at right at around two thousand cars who started it my dad will cheat him okay yeah he had a he had a body shop and towing business here in Ontario called art service and that’s how the because of the towing service that’s how he started doing the wrecking yard started selling parts off the car Zito Dean will he they only had one acre up there and they outgrew that so they zoned us down here he found this five acre plot down here in the early 80s and started down here and had some guys that ran it for several years before I took over yeah I love stories like that where it just you just show like it is all that hard work oh yeah yeah it’s it did it started small and is we’ve just progressively built it

over the years and as the industry’s changed you know we just follow follow along with the trends and the changes and has have built it from there yeah it was really well organized super clean yeah we yeah we keep it clean and you know we’re trying we try and service our customers better that way you know they can come out here and look at the parts they see the quality of the stuff we treat our stuff good and they have confidence in it what can the customer come just pull their own part know we’re a full-service yard we’ll let them come out and look at the parts and then and then they come and say hey I want this this and that we’ll come out and pull it for them you get Tom hey like we got this Chevy pickup in this row go check it out yeah or say they want to you know they want a door that’s this color that added uh okay say come out and hey we’ve got you know ten of these pickups that are similar to that color come out and check them out come back

up give us the stock number tell us what you want we pull it and sometimes we’ll deliver it to them whatever way it takes you know and then you have it delivered yeah we yeah yeah also yeah well for our own delivery trucks we just deliver here in the Treasure Valley but we also ship stuff stuff nationwide we ship on freight trucks okay no we ship parts nationwide all week long so I assume you have like some type of system people can find the part like if they’re in Maine absolutely they look at our website you get used North Verde calm okay they can they can actually search all of our parts they can see all of our parts online okay so and this is we stuck when we started we had we had an inside storage about the third of the size of this building right here and we had we had three racks of transmission’s and three racks of engines as all we had when I started now I’ve got a huge warehouse inside and two big warehouses outside plus this warehouse here that’s just four wheels alone so everything in this

area has been tested yep it’s labeled you know what it go tested plug tag yeah all we got to do is grab it put it on a pallet ship it to you or you can come and pick it up here yeah perfect I love it yeah and this is this is outdoor storage mostly all transmissions yeah then our indoor warehouse is mostly all engines but we do have a separate babe just for transmissions okay and small storage we have over here in all pees we kind of manufactured these deals not okay old truck I see that truck takeoff boxes that we bought and we we made that storage over the years just continuing to recycle everything exactly love it these are all these are all ones that we just process these engines here just got put on pallets and just processed they’re waiting to go get put on shelves okay but it’s a constant process we’re always moving engines in moving engines out like I said earlier like it’s just so clean and well organized which is like not an accident no working in no accep industry like you got a try yes yes

it’s taken years of trial and effort to figure out how to do this correctly and make it efficient and use the space efficiently mm-hmm you know but engines engines are a big part of our business so and and you know if you have an engine that’s a high quality engine you don’t want it sitting out in the rain so you know we keep them inside keep them you know keep them covered up and then here’s another part of our warehouse here that we warehouse transmissions just a more transmission storage space yeah originally this originally this was when I built this building this was all the transmission space we had and that’s why we outgrew it quickly so that’s why I had to add on the other two outdoor warehouses it’s easy to fill up this space it fills up quicker than you think even this even as many transmissions and engines we sell with we decant we can’t keep up with the amount we take in so I remember when we opened our Boise facility and I just when we first got in there that gosh there’s so much space here and then

before we know it we need more space exactly that’s the way I felt when we built this I’m not I’ll never run out of space I kind of was I mistake I scrapped forever yeah I’ll just we can go up to this to the sales counter and show you that yeah I’ve got I got some of the best salesmen in the business they’re got years and years of knowledge people call here that you know they know they’re gonna get them get the right part for him so they’re answering the phones they’re your first point first point of contact yeah these guys are answering the phone slinging parts all day long and they’re the best at it first point of contact is these guys right here that’s RJ and Kelly right here and then Sean he’s our yard dog extraordinary how do most say your is it mostly a phone call emails how does it usually come in we’d prefer phone calls yeah phone calls so like those phone calls are important yes that’s the right question because we really stress that in our business when the answer the phone ask the right questions get

get the information you need so you can close the cell you know because it costs a lot of money to get that phone call that come here especially in this day and age you know getting that personal contact on the phone with people is super important because over an email or something you know something gets lost in translation a lot of times and it’s so important for people to get the right part so they we have to talk to him we want to we want to know all the details even if it starts with an email like it inevitably most the time it ends up it ends up in a phone call so yeah let’s just cut out the email just call us these guys were here to telephone call yeah thanks guys is that is that a rap and we’re back where we started that was good thank you thank you for listening to another episode of recycled Idaho and as we continue the journey across this great state we look forward to bringing you more stories of people and organizations putting in the work to do the right thing