The Cash for Clunkers program has been a success, but did you ever wonder where those cars end up after they are dumped at the dealership? Some parts are salvageable, but the idea behind the program is to get some of the less fuel-efficient cars off the road. Wee found a business in Spartanburg that turns the trash into silver treasure.
It’s a 30 million dollar monster, with a six-thousand horsepower electric motor, which can make metal mincemeat of mashed gas guzzlers, and it sits in the recycling yard of OmniSource: a business which will buy Cash for Clunker vehicles from salvage yards and feed them through an enormous shredder.
Flattened vehicles are crane-hoisted onto and up a conveyer belt, sent through the highly-sophisticated shredder, and mashed into mini-metal morsels. Those fist sized former-fuel-busters are separated for recycling and the scrap sold to steel mills. While the government says it will pay dealerships up to $4500 for a clunker, companies like OminiSource pay salvage yards by the pound. Executive Vice-President of OmniSource Southeast says, “It could be 150 to 200 dollars." Despite the success of the program, OmniSource isn't seeing too many clunkers yet.
Siegel says, "They have just not reached us yet, because we're the final destination."
The salvage yard has seven days from when it receives a clunker to report it, and then it can harvest parts like windshields, before the salvage yard sells it to a recycling business. The deal it made with the government was to not remove the engine to get that fuel inefficiency off the roads.
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