[AT] Salvage yard / junk yard

[Dean Vinson]

Yesterday I went over to a tractor salvage yard I hadn't previously visited,
hoping to find a PTO control rod guide bracket for my M.  The guy that ran
the place wasn't there but his wife let me look around so I spent a cold,
damp half-hour or so wandering around a couple acres worth of scrapped
tractors and junk.  Saw a couple of old Ms that had the guide bracket,
although both were pretty seriously rusted so I don't think I'll go back to
get them.  Saw lots of tractors with the engine head off or the top of the
transmission case off, rust taking over what was left.  Most looked like
they'd been there for years.  My guess is that pound for pound the junk
outweighs the salvageable parts by a factor of maybe a hundred to one.

Made me wonder about how/why a place like that stays in business.  I'd like
to spend a couple hours browsing and looking at all that stuff in more
detail some time, but the point would be to look at the insides of a bunch
of old machines rather than to find much worth buying.  On the way out I
walked past a row of random small parts, stacked a foot or two high and
maybe three or four deep, all along the side of a little road.  Mostly
pretty well rusted, but at one point there was a good-looking belt pulley
drive for an H or M Farmall, obviously placed there fairly recently.  If it
doesn't find a new home fairly soon I don't think it ever will.

I've bought several things from Anderson's Tractor Supply up in Bluffton,
Ohio, and they have a nice setup:  lots of tractors out in the back but on
gravel and cinders rather than just muddy pasture, and lots of parts stored
inside.  I know the smaller places can't make all that capital investment,
but without it I don't see how the inventory holds whatever value it had
when it arrived there.  The stuff with little moving pieces doesn't do well
laying out in the rain, and even the heavy stuff, castings and three-point
hitch arms and drawbars and wheels and such, start to look pretty grim once
they sink into the ground and get rusted up.

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net