That moment I walked into a salvage yard in Memphis and saw how they organize their panels

I had to grab a used fender for a 2010 Corolla last weekend and ended up at Pull-A-Part out on Lamar. Figured it would be the usual chaos but their setup was actually smart - they had all the red cars in one row and silver cars in another, not just grouped by make and model. The guy working there told me they started doing it after a customer complained about walking through 3 rows to find a matching door. I swear it cut my search time in half compared to the last yard I went to over in Nashville. Has anyone else noticed body yards being more organized lately or is this just one random place that figured it out?

2 comments

2 Comments

miawalker5d ago

Is that yard actually clean or was it just a good day? I stopped by a place in Little Rock a few months back and they had the hoods all stacked up like a giant metal jigsaw puzzle. I get what you mean about color sorting though, my buddy runs a shop up in Fayetteville and he swears by organizing his inventory by paint code instead of car model. It sounds weird but he says it saves him a ton of headache when people come in looking for panels that match their specific shade. Maybe salvage yards are finally catching on to the idea that nobody wants to spend an hour digging for a same-color door.

ward.fiona5d ago

Ngl I actually hate that color sorting idea. I'd rather walk through a few rows of the same car model than try to find my specific shade of silver in a sea of similar silvers from different years that are just slightly off. Sounds like a headache waiting to happen.