The rumors were swirling last week, as the two Bay Area locations of self-service wrecking-yard chain Pick Your Part stopped charging the customary $2 admission.
You'd think that customers would love free admission, but it turns out that PYP's $2 speed bump was the only thing keeping hordes of tool thieves and generally scurrilous individuals out of the yard. Meanwhile, the employees had that "final days" look about them. Turns out the rumors were correct: Pick Your Part in Northern California is no more. The company website makes no mention of the closings, but only Southern California locations are now listed. Do any of you know the whole story? If so, please enlighten the rest of us.
That's hard for me to take, because I'd been a regular customer at the Hayward Pick Your Part since the mid-1980s, and hard for all the NorCal-based 24 Hours Of LeMons teams who relied on PYP's fast inventory turnover and low prices (generally lower than those at yards owned by powerful national wrecking-yard chain Pick-N-Pull, which is owned by Schnitzer Steel) to keep their heaps running.
The first-ever LeMons Scavenger Hunt took place at the Hayward yard. The Milpitas yard? Well, that's home to the junked Fiberfab Avenger GT-15 you saw earlier today. What will happen to that fine automobile? Straight to The Crusher, or will some lucky Project Car Hell Poster Child take it home?