The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk gone to the crusher

as some of you may have read i broke the rear mounting bracket on my generator this weekend. so it was off to the (realitively close) bone yard to retrieve a "new" bracket. the place is called hidden valley in maricopa, arizona and was a great resource for dry desert preserved parts from old chevrolet pickups and trucks.

as i pull up to the front of the yard i notice that there is not a single car or truck left in a yard that was home to close to 1500 cars and trucks a portion of which was good vintage material. turns out that the owner of the land who apparently also "owned" the cars on the lot but did not operate the lot, decided he could make more money selling the land to home developers than scraping parts.

the people operating the yard have set up a new yard down the road but could only bring a few parts with them. they informed me that all the cars and trucks from the old yard were crushed! now there were definitely some real junk pieces in the yard that should have been in the crusher long ago, but close to 20 old bolts including trucks, burbs and a very complete and very straight coe that are all now flat as a pancake.

very depressing. just too bad they could not have seen the value in what was still in the yard. i did manage to find the replacement part for my generator, but it was still very sad to see that resource gone.

Not everyone appreciates the finer things in life. Very sad indeed.

That is sad (and stupid, mho) We (stovebolters) need to get someone down to Cuba when Uncle Fidel shuffles off to sequre the AO for Chevy truck parts!!

Oh, the humanity!! A little piece of each of us is gone....

I know the feeling. I bought a '41 GMC from an estate that had hundreds of old cars and trucks. I went down today to see what I need to put it on the trailer. Here's what I found.

This pile is 3-4 rows deep.

That\'s a \'54 or \'55 under two TFs with some IHs on top.

I guess all the ones that didn't sell are in the pile. I need to call tomorrow to make sure mine doesn't end up there.

We, here at the Stovebolt Nation, have got to get out there, & save more 'bolts. If you know of old Stovebolts, that may be in trouble, lets go get them. Especially the COE's. This is no Joke!

Cletis,

There were some TFs in the picture with rims. I need a rim for my spare. Where is this place? Can you pull one? Are you going to the swap meet at The Ball Park next weekend (Sept 8-10)?

TIA

oldbluetruck, I bought the truck from a third party who bought it from the guy who inherited this property. I'm trying to contact my seller to get contact info on the property owner.

I'll miss the swap meet this time because I'm going to the Stovebolt meet in Kansas City.

why did they stack all those trucks in a pile

Jared, that has me scratching my head too. If they plan to crush them why didn't they have it on site and load them in the crusher? Why pick them up once only to have to pick them up again? I guess they didn't study material handling in college.

what a waste... a lot of the problems the old wrecking yards have are with the nazi treehugger enviromentalists... worried about a bit of oil spilled out on the ground..... well, in some cases, a lot of oil.

my experience is not that it's a tree hugger issue, but the urban sprawl. two yards (now three) have been sold to developers to put up more cookie cutter houses. the vehicles have to go some where and it seems most of the time they go to the crusher rather then relocate them to another yard.

as far as the oil...not sure i would want a house that was built over an old yard.

The scrap guys don't care, because scrap iron prices are up right now. They don't care if it's an antique vehicle or a new one. It's just dollars to them.
Besides, they feel that every old vehicle that gets crushed makes the ones that are left worth just that much more!

Cletis, thanks for the reply. Sounds interesting - like a saga. I need to get down to Midlothian before that yard goes to the crusher.

Have a safe trip to KC for the Stovebolt meet. Make sure Fred buys some old clunker that is safe, but wobbles alot. That way he will miss redryder when it is sold/gone.

Maybe, when the boy gets older I can get out more. Kids need a lot of attention.

Its sad to see an old truck go to the crusher

I watched several old trucks go to the crusher a few months ago, & could do nothing about it.An old farmer, that lived a few miles from work, had a unbelievable collection of old trucks. He passed away, a few years ago, & when his sons heard about the prices of steel , they decided to start cutting them up. They would drag these trucks out by the highway, one by one, & start cutting the axles out from under them. The old farmer had a flatbed tractor trailer, so they would do the loading there. I saw them cut up two nice '50's White 3000 COE's, a '54 Ford F800 raod tractor, a '36 Dodge 1 1/2 ton cab, & chassis, & three '55-'59 GMC flatnose school buses, that had 302 engines in them. Bad thing about it was they had they're mind made up, about selling them as scrap, & would not sell you any of them. I can see they have many more old trucks, on the back side of the property, but thank goodnees the scrapping has stopped, for some reason.

It looks like if they were going to scrap a truck they would sell it to you for scrap iron value

how good of shape was the 36 dodge in

Oldbluetruck, I tried to email you about a wheel for your truck but it bounced. Send me a PM.

Hey guys... I hope this doesn't sound stupid but is there ANY way we could set up some kind of directory or network so we could list and/or promote more of these boneyards. SO THAT we don't have this kind of loss again in the future? I don't know how difficult this would be to set up but if there's anything we could do I'd make sure I did my part. If there is already something like this out there, maybe we could improve on it and promote it better. ??? Just thinking out loud here I guess.

Anyone have ideas?

The '36 Dodge, wasn't that bad. By the time I saw it the rear axle, had been removed, & the glass broken out of it. The body was near perfect, surface rust only.

Cletis,

Sorry your message bounced. I changed internet providers to get faster service for my son. Cost of living when the kids get older.

I will try to send you a message.

Thanks. And have a safe trip to KC.