Industry History | Copart — Bob's Towing Yard Bought on Fifth Street
· 1982-1
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · Report an issue
_22.jpg?width=1280)
_30.jpg?width=1280)
Find memories left by people near you.
Distribute Bounty
This will distribute the bounty equally among all qualifying memories. This action cannot be undone.
Cancel Bounty
Are you sure you want to cancel this bounty? The remaining amount will be refunded to your account.
Success!
Operation completed successfully.
Error
Something went wrong.
Industry History | Copart — Bob's Towing Yard Bought on Fifth Street
kevin
People treat Copart as a Dallas listing that always sold wrecked cars from a screen.
The first book was one Vallejo salvage lot.
In 1982 Willis J. Johnson, then thirty-four and already a Sacramento dismantler, bought Bob's Towing Service, a yard that had auctioned damaged cars in Vallejo since 1946.
The physical address that still carries the yard is 282 Fifth Street.
Johnson had funded an earlier junkyard by moving his family into a trailer.
He renamed the cooperative of parts sellers Copart around 1986 and kept the name when the Vallejo lot became the seed of a chain.
By the early 1990s the company ran four Northern California yards, then added Oregon, Washington, and Texas, including North Texas Salvage Pool in Dallas.
On 17 March 1994 Copart sold 2.3 million shares at $12 a share in 1994 dollars and listed on Nasdaq as CPRT.
Internet bidding followed in 1998, a break from the local physical auction that had been the industry rule.
The mechanism is still the Fifth Street one.
An insurer needs a wreck gone today, and a buyer who can use the parts or the title will pay more than a crusher on the same lot.
Fifth Street in 1982 was a working Vallejo industrial strip, not a glass campus in Dallas.
A visitor still finds a Copart gate on the same street.
The screen outgrew the yard.
The yard is where the book started.
Photo: San Francisco Bay shore via Wikimedia Commons.
_22_thumbnail.jpg?width=1280)
_30_thumbnail.jpg?width=1280)
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
changes?
delete this memory?
We detected that you have a Blox in your crypto wallet! We will import the Blox into your account.
Click on done below to complete the import.
Welcome Back!
Sign in to preserve cherished moments
Don't have an account?
Welcome!!
Sign up and start preserving cherished moments
?
?
Choose your payment method
Buy with Metablox Credit
Do you want to mint Blox with Metablox Credit?
Which Crypto would you like to use?
Purchase Confirmed!
Your Blox is being minted on-chain and will appear in your profile shortly.
Log in or sign up to claim your Blox.
How many credits do you want to buy?
$100 USD = 1 Metablox Credit = 1 Blox.
Use Metablox Credit to mint any Blox you want on the map.
expand_more