Your Source for Up-To-Date News and Research on the Collision Repair Industry 

 

click here to subscribe to the FREE INSIGHT Editor's Desk News Alert Email

SUBSCRIBERS-ONLY
Today's News
INSIGHT This Month
INSIGHT Archives
Survey Center
Letter to the Editor

Business Tools
Subscription Information
CSI Reporting
Financial Analysis
IRS Audit Guide

Management/
Technical Info
Market Watch Rates
INSIGHT Inside this month's issue...

Feedback
Letter to the Editor

ARA Efforts Help Defeat Scrappage Section of Energy Bill

Fairfax, VA -- The Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA) announced that it has set the record straight on vehicle scrappage programs in the United States Senate thereby helping the professional auto recycler. According to an ARA press release:

The auto recycling industry opposes vehicle scrappage programs that paint a bull's eye on small businesses in our industry by eliminating some of the very vehicles, vehicle parts, and marketing opportunities that some in the industry need to survive. Since recycled parts used in the repair and upkeep of older vehicles is a significant source of commerce for some professional automotive recyclers, motor vehicle scrappage programs pose an economic threat to our industry.

In addition, the bill contained vague language that states the Secretary of Energy shall approve a plan that "provides an appropriate payment to the person recycling the scrapped automobile or light-duty truck." No standards were suggested for setting payment levels, thus no assurances that payments would be fair or adequate. As professional automotive recyclers whose business it is to sell recycled parts, we time and time again are directed to address, with inadequate or no compensation, environmental problems we did not create. This time, with all due respect, auto recyclers said no thanks!

Over the past several weeks, professional automotive recyclers throughout the country wrote letters and phoned their United States Senators urging the vehicle scrappage section be stripped from the Energy bill currently before the U.S. Senate. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) responded to our pleas and those of others by offering an amendment removing the entire scrappage section that subsequently passed the full U.S. Senate by voice vote. In a press release, Sen. Campbell declared "I am reassured that my colleagues joined me in relieving the Energy bill of this sneaky and ill-conceived provision. I don't think that states want to be, and I don't believe that they should be, in the business of auto salvage."

©2002 Collision Repair Industry INSIGHT
All Rights Reserved

FEATURED
LINKS:

INSIGHT Supports the NABC!
Do You?