The British car Parts Story

1995

A true story

written 1/2019* 793 Words

By Howard Yasgar

The following true story will best be appreciated by anyone that knows anything about the auto parts

Business.

In 1995 I was in Detroit, I was there looking to buy deals on quantities of auto parts that I could ship to Florida and then export to Central or South America.

Our company always had foreign importers coming in that were looking to buy deals on car parts.

One of our good friends in Detroit, Barney Kaplan, told us that he had just received a large quantity of automotive electrical parts, and we should look at it.

So, the next day we flew to Detroit to look at what he had.

What he had, was four large pallet boxes filled with electrical parts made by the British company Lucas Electric, located in the U.K.

Right away I knew it would be difficult for us to sell, the reason being that Lucas parts only fit British vehicles, and we knew very little about British cars, and almost all our foreign customers wanted U.S. Car parts.

Well, we looked the parts over and there appeared to be lots of red plastic automotive taillights, and all kinds of British relays and car switches, I knew the parts could be worth a lot of money somewhere.

So, contrary to my better judgement we bought the whole 1000 lb. lot for $1.00 a pound.

We now owned a 1000 lbs. of new British car parts, and we shipped it all to Miami.

One by one our customers came in and looked at the items, but nobody wanted British car parts.

I started thinking perhaps we had made a bad deal.

Someone suggested that I spread the parts out on the warehouse floor, and make a master list of each Part number, then the list could be sent the list to foreign car parts dealers.

It sounded like a good idea, so then it took me over a month, working every day, spreading everything out and putting everything in numerical order.

After sorting, I could see many items were red plastic taillights for British cars.

Once we had all the parts spread out and organized, one of our friends, who was a Venezuelan exporter,

Named Vasquez, stopped by our warehouse, he looked the parts over, and he said he was very interested; he said that he had a customer.

Vasquez asked how much, and I said $1.50 a pound.

Vasquez was a good negotiator, he knew I was sick and tired of sorting all the parts, so he offered us $1.25 a pound.

Vasquez was right, I was ready to sell at any price, and I accepted his offer.

I asked Vasquez if he wanted to pack the parts in suitable shipping boxes.

Vasquez said no, he said his customer had to ship the parts to his country as mixed junk to avoid paying any duty. So, if the parts were all mixed up it was perfectly ok.

Vasquez was driving a big Ford station wagon, so he rolled up all the windows 3/4 of the way up and we threw all the British car parts inside, and we did it until we filled the car completely up.

It took Vasquez two complete carloads for him to remove all the parts. But when we were done, I was so happy the stuff was finally gone.

It bothered me that I had wasted over a month of my life working on sorting the parts, and now they now are all mixed up again.

I went out of town for a week, and when I returned, I was shocked to see all the Lucas British car parts

Piled up on my warehouse floor again.

But now it was like real junk with all the parts falling out of their boxes.

It seems my friend Vasquez returned everything saying that his customer refused the merchandise, and Vasquez said he had no intention of paying me.

I asked him why his customer rejected the parts, and this is what Vasquez told me.

His customer came from a country with all British right hand drive cars.

It appears all our British parts were for left hand drive cars

My next move for the parts was in to the trash dumpster.