Auto Parts City brings junk yards into the recycling future

Auto Parts City Inc.’s offices, yard and retail stores in Gurnee are heated by waste oil the business drains from vehicles. The trucks are fueled by recycled gasoline and the picnic tables outside are made from recycled tires.

“We’re trying to change the junk yard image of auto recycling,” said Jay Brosten, who runs the business with his brother Larry Brosten. “It’s not the old image of cars strewn all over. It’s a systematic process.” Auto Parts City is the cleanest operation in the state, said Jay, of Lincolnshire.

When a car comes to Auto Parts City at 3455 Washington St., brought in by towing companies in Lake or Cook County or sold by an individual, it is put in a lot to await disassembly. About 1,200 cars fill the two lots.

Personal belongings left in the car like sweaters or CDs are placed in bins for the Salvation Army, Jay said. Then the vehicle is hoisted up, and the draining process begins.

“We were the first U.S. operation to install the English system, Crow Environmental, that we use to drain all of the fluids from a vehicle,” he said. “Basically, it’s the simplicity of the draining apparatus that makes it unique. It vacuum-drains to separate out brake fluid, oil, anti-freeze. The nice thing about it is that it has a gas tank purge system.”

Recycled fluids are sold at Auto Parts City’s retail store.

A glass company removes glass for recycling. Other salvageable parts are organized and stored or sold. Pointing to piles of about 1,000 tires, Jay said that’s the most expensive and difficult part to recycle. “My nephew is working on developing a process to melt them down,” Jay said.

Jay said hybrid electric cars present more of a challenge to recycle, because they are more dangerous to disassemble and require special gloves and equipment. “We have a better way of recycling late models,” he said.

A car in the garage on Oct. 24 had been sitting in the previous owner’s garage for 30 years, Jay said. “The plates are from 1985. But we charged the battery and fluids, put some air in the tires and it started up.”

Customers can donate a car's value to charity, such as ElderCARE or the Make A Wish Foundation, through Auto Parts City. "We take a vehicle in, determine if it's worth fixing and then the charity gets the value of whatever it sells for," he said.

Mary Ellen Saunders of ElderCARE said, “Although we haven’t had anyone donate a vehicle yet, ElderCARE can receive the proceeds from the sale of a donated vehicle through them. Auto Parts City in Gurnee does some amazing things with auto recycling.”

The Brostens started auto recycling in 1938, when Jay and Larry Brosten’s grandfather owned Midwest Tire in Chicago. Eventually it became Hy-Way Auto, operating in unincorporated Lake County. In 1961, the business moved to Park City.

In 1976, they were operating a “state-of-the-art yard, as the pre-dismantling foreign auto specialists in the midwest,” Jay said.

As a kid, Jay would cut and remove car parts for the family business. He has a scar on his face from doing that when he was about 10 years old. “One of my first cars was a wrecked cadillac,” he said. He brought fixed it up with the Hy-Way crew.

In 1984, another business, City Auto Parts, became available. They bought it, but it was grandfathered in that they couldn’t expand or build up the business, Jay said. In 2004, Ford Motor Company bought Hy-Way Auto Parts Inc. “Ford was diversifying and buying out old yards,” he said.

The result was that “Our old operation became our biggest competitor,” Jay said. But the Brostens’ new business, Auto Parts City, was in a different industry than the Ford-owned Hy-Way Auto Parts.

“We do more retail now. Hy-Way Auto catered to insurance companies and dealerships. Here we’re buying cars by weight,” he said.

It took Auto Parts City four years under contract before they were able to open in their current location in Gurnee. Jay and Larry’s father, Hy Brosten. died before the grand opening at 94 years old, but was able to see the soft opening, Jay said.

“He was a very easy-going, soft-spoken person. He could be very stubborn. He was our PR man. Everyone in Lake County knew him, there wasn’t a place we’d go that someone wouldn’t talk to him,” Jay said.

Hy is memorialized on a stone looking out over a lot of cars that will be recycled. Engraved are his famous words, ‘Don’t worry, everything will be alright.’

For more information, visit www.apcity.com.