Auto Recycling World NOV 2022 / by Paul D’Adamo / Read original article
You can maximize profit through your auto parts inventory by considering seven basic rules or ‘the 7 deadly sins of cores’.
My obsession with inventory started when I walked into Bill’s Auto Parts in 1990 to help my In-Laws with their recently purchased business. Not having been in the business before, it was easy to recognize a mess when we saw it. It became a combination of cleaning out the old and organizing for the new. We also realized how valuable our inventory was. That has turned into a lifetime endeavor to maximize inventory for profit.
Most of the issues with the cores boiled down to 7 basic rules, hence the 7 Deadly Sins of Cores. I call them deadly because no one wants to waste good labor to remove auto cores. However, a lot of old-school thinking exists in the industry. Some Recyclers want to pull specific cores from each vehicle because they see it as “the easiest way.” I would ask, “do we strip every vehicle’s parts to put them on the shelf.” The answer is NO because we have sophisticated YMS and inventory tools to track what we need and how many we need. We need to use our brain power combined with our system information to identify the core’s “worth” pulling. Based on our lists, many Recyclers are surprised to find $175 EPS racks, $140 Infotainment Systems, and $50 ECMs.
Don’t get caught up in the old-school thinking of auto cores as simply alternators, starters, and A/C compressors. Think Big and Think Profitably. Do you send your guys out to pull $25 alternators for customers anymore? But if you have 6 of the same part on the shelf and you are pulling a drive train from a vehicle, it would be much more profitable to match an ID #, mark the stock #, and put it into a core box.
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