Desert Junkyard side gig?

Background: At age 52, I am semi-retired. I still work 16 hours per week for the purposes of maintaining eligibility to self-pay for health insurance, and the actual income covers the cost of the self-pay. Fine.

Aside from that, I have enough money to pay for life - that is, all the basics are covered. Not a lot of spare cash for fun or hobbies, but that's a choice of how I want to live. However, I find myself a bit bored.

That said, there was a bit in the "hotlink" thread recently about how Ford Explorer/Escape tailgate glass hinges are failing in the northern areas. It got me thinking...

I went to the junkyard and discovered I can buy those hinges all day long for about $6.50 each. They sell on eBay for around $18, including shipping.

Even figuring for PayPal & eBay fees, and paying for shipping and packing materials, I'm fairly certain I could make about five bucks per hinge.

I figure I could make a spare $150-$200/month fairly easily. Not only would the money be welcome, it would give me something to do that doesn't cost me a lot of money, and in fact makes me a few bucks.

What I need to find out from you Northern folks is what other sorts of parts to add to my shopping list. I'm looking for small, easy-to-ship parts that commonly fail in parts of the country where there's weather.

I could also extend personal shopping services to GRMers who are looking for less-common parts, for the same $5 profit.

If you want to tell me why this is a bad idea, I'll gladly listen. If you want to make suggestions for high-demand items, I'll gladly listen to that as well.

Thanks!

Why don't you go on ebay and look at the most watched items and track them. You could set a price range and zoom in on any vehicle or component you want. If a yugo ashtray has 50 watchers with 3 days to go its probably a candidate.

In reply to bearmtnmartin:

Because I don't know how to do that on eBay. I certainly don't see anything pointing to "most watched items" anywhere on the site.

That's not a bad idea if you have the availability at the junkyard.

I've been seeing someone on my local CL doing something I always wanted to do. They're hauling back a 5th wheel trailer full of car and truck parts from Cali, Arizona, Nevada, and other desert areas. All the old 1960-1990 stuff that has returned to the earth around here.

If you can get them cheap, the fuel composition sensor used in quite a few Ford flex fuel vehicles are probably a good part to target. They tend to rot out after 15 years of living in a frame rail up north. My local yard sold me a nice dry one from the firewall of a Taurus for $7. They retail new for $700. They sell used on eBay for $40 or so.

Anything that lives on the underside of the car. Particularly application-specific fasteners. I ended up having to buy a $65 bolt for my son's Exploder at the dealer because the old one was rusted into place and I had to cut it. It was the front lower strut mount bolt, if that helps.

I'm looking for solid fenders for 41-46 Chevy/GMC if you see any of those in the desert. I have Family in Las Vegas that can store them and arrange transport.

Any suspension bolt that lives on the underside of a Miata. While the shell I am using is 100% rust free, most of the fasteners for the suspension and what-not under the car are from a 1990 winter driven car. Nothing like the factory cad finish to detail a project.

Look at Honda stuff. Anything that is off a more desirable car or is swapped onto a more basic one. Things like Integra rear discs and DC2 front subframes.

Fuel filler tubes on anything from the 90s would probably be a good one.

I like to search eBay for a specific model of car (say, one you know just hit your junkyard and is still complete) then refine by sold items only (NOT "completed" but "sold," difference is "sold" have actually sold) and sort by highest price first. I go down the list and note how much each part made. In your case you can use that as a "shopping list" of sorts; it tells you what actually sold and how much it went for. That way you're not stuck with unsellable parts and aren't stuck paying more than they'll sell for.

It's surprising what you find. Whole doors are difficult to make money on with a reasonable time involvement. But strip off the door latch / power lock motor, window motor and regulator assembly, handle, and power window switches and you end up with as much profit as a whole door with a whole lot less time to ship. Also if there's a computer (or "MPX module") in the door that's often as much profit as the rest of the door. $50 - $100 sale value, highly car dependent, for something the yard barely wants to charge you for.

If I ever find myself with an excess of time I'm planning on stripping a few cars as a try at a fun hobby business. I've parted a couple before and made good money but never did enough to get really good at it or ruthless about throwing out all the $10 parts that suck up time but don't make enough money.

My experience has been that any parts selling for less than $50 make it hard to earn enough per hour of work to be worthwhile. But that highly depends on how fast you can work stripping, photographing, listing, packing, and shipping the items. I tend to take my time so it takes me longer than it might take other people. Also if the volume was higher the per-part time involvement would go down.

It is extremely difficult to impossible to ship used fuel system parts because they qualify as hazmat. I have heard of people shipping fuel filler necks successfully, probably by lies of omission, but we could NOT find anyone willing to ship a used fuel tank.

Nobody makes replacement plastic fuel tanks and the manufacturers only seem to stock them for 7-8 years. GM fullsize FWDs with plastic tanks will rust the retaining lugs off of the top.

Download the ebay app and when you are at the yard and see something you think is neat search it and see what the sold item went for. I use it everywhere now. Something on clearance for 75% off at the store? Look it up quick and see if money can be made just by flipping it.

Note: I found eBay buyers to be tremendously hard to please on shipping issues. They are notorious for unreasonable expectations, and it can get REALLY frustrating.

There is only 1 way I will ship now. Flat rate USPS boxes, and ONLY insured. I can get these out instantly (without weighing, wrapping, etc), and I already know the price. I am prepared for the package to be lost, and have to wait 2 months for the insurance claim.

If I can't sell at a price high enough to pay for the flat rate and appropriate insurance, then no sale.

I also don't cut deals to buyers on shipping (Can you put it all in 1 box and lower my shipping costs?). Nope. The sale terms were clear.

I also don't ship internationally, but some of those buyers are the biggest butts. I have several negative feedbacks (which CAN NOT be erased) from buyers who were mad I wouldn't ship internationally, even though the ad clearly stated it.

I do this! Often find some part that becomes desired because it fails early while the vehicle still has good value. That front trim that is poorly attached, cruise control button that gets sun burned and dissolves, sunglasses holder with a broken latch. For every big item classic Mustang part I find, I have 100 opportunities for a Honda mirror or Aurora cup holder or something.

You may find yourself getting on the mailing list of the local Pic-N-Pulls and hitting the $100 days with a list of parts.

Bruce

I do not mean to discount SVreX's experience at all, but I have had good success in shipping using either USPS Priority Mail or Fedex Ground. I think SV might have a bad local post office that's losing packages for him or something. I haven't had a single shipping-related negative feedback with thousands of items sold.

But with both carriers, watch your shipping costs. For example, I sold an intake manifold at $75 with free shipping; dumb move. The buyer was in California, and shipping was $41, so after eBay, Paypal, and shipping fees I netted a whopping $20 or so.

Feedback is heavily slanted to the buyer's favor. You can't leave them negative feedback at all, and the only way I've found to get negs they leave for you changed is if they agree to it. There is a "report buyer" button next to negative feedback but I haven't had any luck with it.

It's still a nice avenue to have to sell stuff. There's nothing the replace it yet; I keep hoping for something. Craigslist has such a limited reach and to me, meeting with flaky people is even more of a time suck than shipping stuff.

I used to do this before eBay was popular. I scrounged Lincoln Mark VII air suspension bits at at the local Pull-A-Part and sold to the guys on the Lincoln forum. I grabbed every Marchal "cat eye" fog light on the lot because the square-eye Mustang guys wanted them.

Made decent money, but most of the buyers were folks I'd known online for years, so scammers weren't part of the equation.

Make sure you can ship the items cheap! I've gotten burned a LOT trying to make a quick buck, only to end up making next to nothing (or even losing money) when it came time to ship.

But I tell you what, my junkyards around here SUCK. Their selection is terrible, their prices suck, and the folks who run them are so creepy that every time I go there I'm afraid they're going to kill me and make wind chimes out of my bones.

I would LOVE to pay someone to strip parts off of junkyard cars for me!

Yes. Overestimate the shipping. Use the fedex or usps calc (get a scale) then base it on their calculators. Then jack it up a little because ebay takes 10%. Then used eBay shipping service to print your label and you get a discounted rate off an already lower starting point. I sent 4 identical boxes last week, one through ebay and 3 through fedex directly. They ebay one went to cali for $13. The others were to nc, wa, and somewhere else and they were $16-17.50 to ship.

Good advice here. I ship 95% of my sales through USPS flat rate. No guessing on shipping costs, I suggest you look for items that you can fit in those boxes as well, takes the biggest unknown out of the equation that way.

I'm always looking for '72-93 Dodge truck parts, and there are always a few in your you-pull-it yards out there. Your profile (that I e-stalked) says you are in Las Vegas; I could also use a "man on the ground" to help me secure rust free vehicles from time to time, if you were so inclined. Obviously, you would be compensated for your work in this sort of endeavor, if you were so inclined. I had two more trucks lined up in LV when I drove this D100 home from Hesperia, but I couldn't make the logistics work out by myself at the time. Knowing someone local sure would have been nice.

In reply to Cooter:

I think that we could probably create a mutually beneficial arrangement. Please email me at yv1ax (that's the number 1, not an "L") at juno.com

EvanR,Cooter, Im in Los Angeles if you ever need anything.

Would love to be in touch with both of you. I'll send EvanR a email in a moment. I'll probably be in touch with MulletTruck in due time, as well. My address is CJ6CJ8 (like the Jeeps) at the google mailing company, in case it ends up in spam.

I've never had mine fail, but hood/hatch struts could be worthwhile.