Auto auction giant sets sights on Augusta

One of the world's largest auto auction companies has its sights set on Augusta.

Dallas-based Copart Inc. is planning to develop a 20-acre vehicle yard at 3810 Hensley Road in south Augusta, just off Peach Orchard Road past the Tobacco Road intersection.

The online vehicle-auction company moved a step closer to opening its 10th Georgia operation earlier this month by securing Augusta Planning Commission approval to rezone the site from "manufactured home residential" to "heavy industry."

That's somewhat amusing, considering the property is neither occupied by manufactured homes nor would it be used for heavy industry once Copart opens the auction yard. But more on that later.

The main thing you probably want to know is: What is Copart?

Last year the auction company brought in more than $1.8 billion from storing and liquidating cars, trucks, RVs, motorcycles, boats and heavy equipment. It gets the cars from insurance companies, banks, finance companies, fleet operators, dealers, rental-car companies, government agencies and, yes, even Average Joes.

What started as a single junkyard in California 37 years ago has grown into a internet-only auction firm with more than 200 storage lots throughout the U.S. and 10 foreign countries, offering more than 125,000 clean- and salvage-titled vehicles daily to professional dismantlers, rebuilders, dealers and exporters, as well as ordinary individuals.

With a market cap of around $16.8 billion, the publicly traded company is probably one of the biggest and fastest growing corporations you've never heard of. Last summer it was added to the S&P 500, bumping fellow Texas company Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. off the list.

I'm speculating those who play in metro Augusta's scratch-and-dent auto sector would consider the company's future south side yard a "big deal." The next nearest Copart facilities are in Columbia, S.C., and Atlanta.

But don't expect a flea-market atmosphere at Copart's yard – the company's inventory is primarily on consignment, with the bulk of its 750,000 registered online buyers and sellers occupying varying rungs of the "end-of-life-vehicle" ladder.

Copart was an early adopter of online bidding, becoming the first vehicle auction company with physical locations to allow buyers to submit proxy bids over the internet starting in 1998.

Despite the company's name being "Copart," it doesn't actually "part-out" vehicles like Pick-n-Pull or Pull-A-Part, the latter of which operates a 23-acre yard in east Augusta. Rather than sell exhaust manifolds and fenders onesie-twosie for $40 a pop, Copart's average vehicle sale is just under $2,300.

The proposed Copart site is owned by Trevin Automotive Towing and occupied by Fulcher's Used Auto Parts (think of a less-glamorous Pull-A-Part).

The planning commission hearing was necessary because any significant improvement to the property triggers a rezoning under a 1991 rule. Copart, not being a Sanford and Son-type operation, obviously wanted the zoning sewed up before investing in new pavement, landscaping, better fencing and a brand-new office building.

"It is really quite a very uspcale, very nice facility," Copart's Augusta attorney Ed Enoch told the planning commission during its the June 3 meeting. "If you've seen pictures of what it looks like now, this would be a drastic improvement."

The rezoning was unanimously approved, but only after Augusta Commissioner Marion Williams (who apparently enjoys sitting in on planning commission meetings) pushed for a biannual inspection of the yard to ensure its inventory isn't polluting the environment.

Too many salvage yards, he said, have left the city "in a terrible situation" once they close. (Did somebody say "Goldberg Bros?").

"I need to be sure that we're not dumping stuff on this community for people making money, whether they be in Waynesboro or Texas or wherever they are," Williams said.

The District 9 commissioner's concern for the environment is laudable, even if he didn't fully understand Copart isn't a scrap yard (its business model is based on getting vehicles off its properties as quickly as possible).

Buck Carson, a Copart property manager, assured officials soil contamination would be a non-issue. He said inoperable vehicles are stripped of batteries and drained of oil, antifreeze and other fluids before they arrive on flatbed tow trucks. Driveable vehicles stored at Copart lots are monitored for leaks during their 14- to 45-day stay, and any spills are cleaned up with an Environmental Protection Agency-approved anti-contamination agent, Carson said.

(Interesting factoid: About 40 years ago, one in every 25 vehicles involved in a traffic accident resulted in a car being "totaled." Today, the ratio is one in five.)

No individuals objected to the Copart's petition to rezone the property, which is bordered to the east by a Norfolk Southern rail line and to the west by the Flynn's Inn Campground RV park. Other surrounding parcels are occupied by a mix of low-density manufactured- and single-family homes.

The old Fulcher's salvage yard's taxable value is $289,076. I'm betting that valuation increases substantially once Copart is finished with it (assuming it completes the county's regulatory ropes-course).

Nationally, the company appears to be firing on all cylinders. It's latest earnings report for the quarter ending April 30 showed net profits of $192.7 million, a 51.3 percent increase from the same period of the previous year.

GUILTY PLEASURES: Since we're on the topic of the automotive afterlife, I have something to admit: I love junkyards.

As a longtime card-carrying member of the Pull-A-Part "VIP Club" (which saves me a $1 off the entry fee), I have spent many hours rummaging through wrecked cars in search of cheap parts for numerous semi-reliable cars I've owned over the years.

In fact, about 10 percent of my EMP-proof 1978 Dodge pickup came from the company's Sand Bar Ferry Road salvage yard, including its windshield, windshield-wiper motor, bed liner, exhaust pipe, tailgate, power-steering pump, rear-view mirrors, speedometer cable, axle shafts...

Don't get the wrong idea here: I'm no mechanic. I'm just semi-handy with a wrench – a fringe benefit of growing up rural and lower-middle class. Electronic problems are mostly out of my league, which is unfortunate because computers are responsible for an inordinate number of modern "mechanical" woes.

The $400 repair bill you got for a minor engine hiccup and the dreaded "check engine" light may very well have been triggered by faulty $15 sensor that took 15 minutes to replace.

Here's an example of the ghosts in our machines: I recently learned through an internet forum that the transmission-control module in my 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee was factory-programmed to engage only four of its five available forward gears. For reasons known only to Daimler-Chrysler's engineering geniuses, the 5-speed automatic transmission wasn't "told" to behave like a 5-speed until the 2001 model year.

My solution was to go to the junkyard and pull the 8-track-sized module off a decent-looking 2002 model. I unbolted and unplugged the black box, reinstalled it in my car and...voila! Now I have a quieter engine at interstate speed, 200 fewer RPMs in top gear and two extra miles per gallon.

And all it took was an hour of my weekend and a $30 part. God bless the computer that told me I had a bad computer.

CONSUMER TIP OF THE DAY: Last year my wife bought me a $40 OBDII scanner. It plugs into the computer port of any car made after 1996 and reads the vehicle's trouble "codes."

Get one. Mine already has paid for itself about 10 times over.

WHEN ONLY NEW WILL DO: Many junkyard parts are, well, junk. So it often makes more sense to visit your friendly neighborhood auto parts store first. Folks living in the Evans area will soon have another parts purveyor from which to choose: Missouri-based O’Reilly Auto Parts is planning to build its eighth metro-area store at 4475 Washington Road, between the Sherwin-Williams paint store and the Christian Brothers Automotive repair shop.

Augusta-based commercial realty firm The Palomar Group brokered the deal on the property, which sits just west of the Evans Walmart supercenter. An O'Reilly spokesman said this past week it was too early in the process to project a store opening date.

NEW NAME, SAME PLACE: The future O'Reilly's is just down the hill from the Shoppes at Camelot retail center at 4446 Washington Road, where the former Eli's American restaurant has recently rebranded itself as Suite 10 Restaurant & Bar. It's still in the same spot it always was – Suite 10 (get it?) – but it no longer is affiliated with founder and former owner Bryan Mitchell.

Talk amongst yourselves.

AU HEALTH 2U: If you notice any construction going on at 3722 Wheeler Road, it is for the latest Augusta University Health joint venture with urgent-care provider Perfect Health.

The bulk of the nearly 11,000-square-foot clinic will serve as pediatric space for AU Health, which began work earlier this year on a similarly sized building in Grovetown on Robinson Avenue (the site formerly known as Boots, Bridles & Britches). That location will primarily offer women/children's care and pediatric-cardiology services.

The new Wheeler Road care center – sandwiched between the WOW! broadband operations center and Roy Road – will be the sixth AU-Perfect Health location. Its tentative opening date is December.

Closer to AU Health's downtown campus is the 17,500-squre-foot clinic under construction on Chafee Avenue. The $5.5 million project will house infectious-disease specialists as well as provide multidisciplinary care for patients in the health system's Ryan White Program. Completion is expected in January.

Reach Damon Cline at (706) 823-3352 or dcline@augustachronicle.com.

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