Businesses like family-owned Heavy Salvage in Pickens, SC are selling used truck cabs, trailers and truck parts to large trucking companies that “historically wouldn’t buy salvage.”
Trucking companies are turning to junkyards as a nationwide shortage of big rigs plagues the industry, The Post has learned.
“The equipment shortage is worse than the driver shortage at the moment,” said Don Ake, vice president of FTR, an economic and forecasting company covering commercial transportation.Trailers are harder to repair and are mostly sold for parts when they are damaged.Ake estimates that the industry is short between 85,000 and 100,000 trucks as the current supply breaks down and companies can’t find the parts to fix them or new trucks to replace them with.
But salvage companies insist there’s no shame in turning to them for equipment, noting that any salvage vehicle is ultimately inspected by government officials for safety standards before it’s put back on the road. King, for his part, sells between 50 and 60 trucks a day mostly on behalf of insurance companies whose customers have been in accidents and are submitting a claim for the damaged vehicle.
“We are seeing more demand for trucks that are being rehabilitated versus completely stripped down for parts,” King said.But some industry executives of large companies say they’ve avoided the salvage market because they harvested parts from their own fleets or invested more heavily in their maintenance crew.