Dead cars head to the junkyard, but what happens once it’s there? Once at the junkyard, what happens to a car that’s no longer on the road?

The simple fact is the car crusher is hungry and it must be fed. This machine has a hardened steel jaw that’s ready to take on any vehicle that enters its realm.

Some Vehicles Are Used for Parts

In some areas of the country and world, cars that are sent to the junkyard are sorted and stored. These cars are used for the parts that are still in them. Junkyards can make money from people working on older vehicles that want to find useful parts at a discount. During the time at this part of the junkyard, the specially made parts are available to give drivers a resource for the items they need.

Recycling Cars is Huge

When cars die, they got to the junkyard and eventually become part of a scrap heap. The car crusher will make them into an unrecognizable mass of metal that is recycled. The U.S. automotive recycling industry reclaims some 750 million pounds of scrap each and every month. This scrap moves through a series of crushing, shredding, sorting, and smelting facilities to salvage almost every usable material from an old vehicle.

The Most Recycled Consumer Product in the World

The automobile is the most recycled consumer product in the world with 95 percent of all vehicles reclaimed through the recycling process. Old cars go to the junkyard when they die and eventually become something else. Much of the reclaimed materials end up back in new cars, which means less of the raw materials in the world are being used to create the new cars that you see at dealerships today.

The Sorting Process of Materials from Old Autos is Amazing

The crushed and shredded materials from old cars are moved on a conveyer belt with a large magnet above it which pulls the steel out of the mix. From there, another process brings the aluminum from the mix and the rest is shipped to India and China for hand sorting. This is quite a process of recycling and reusing the materials from an old car.

Metals from Old Cars are Valuable

Aluminum, brass, copper, and zinc are some of the most valuable items that cars are made from. The smelting process sorts and creates metal ingots that are ready to be reused at the auto plant. Recycled aluminum can find its way to being used for everything from car parts to barbecues. Knowing most of the items from an old car is reused is extremely impressive.

Where do old cars go to die? They go to the junkyard to go through a process of recycling and rebuilding to create new parts and new items. As much as 25 percent of some cars do end up in landfills, but this has to do with the cost of landfill space, which is cheap, but most of every car is recycled and reused in some way.