I drove 500 miles to an auction in Wolf Point, Montana Saturday. Advertised to have lots of engines, frames, parts etc etc. Got there to find that there were very few parts, mostly rusty wheel rims, two blocks and some trucks. One 26 coupe on a wrong chassis. Not a lot of T people there, poor advertising. They sold the trucks and the coupe, I bought 3 TT trucks and an AA truck, most of the parts and bid on the two T's I didn't buy. The owner decided he wouldn't sell any of the parts up on the hill because nothing was bringing what he thought it should. (He's a multi millionaire--inherited the biggest John Deere collection in the world and just sold a many thousand acre wheat farm) I went back a couple days after the auction and tried to buy some of the engines in this row. He would not sell me one cotter pin let alone the 26 engines that were there. He apparently told the scrapper he couldn't sell anything either. It all has or will be hauled in.
ARGH!!
Apparently the guy is an idiot. Thanks for nothing pal!
I have seen many people like this in the past. If an item won't bring what they want, they sell it for scrap for way less. Makes no sense to me. I don't see how he could control what the scrapper does with it once it has been sold.Dave
Would that happen to be at the Louis Toavs place?
(Yeah......I'm a tractor guy)
What a waste of repairable parts.
I don't know what Montana laws are but perhaps you could get a temporary scrapper permit or license and make him an offer for it all then part it out.
Find and talk to that scrapper!
This is stupid and just down right spiteful.
This is America and folks can do as they wish with what is theirs but I hope there is a warm spot in H*ll for people like this.
Appears to be some good usable parts in those photos.
The guy must not be too bright- summer is the worst time to haul scrap as the price always goes down this time of year.
I own a small scrap business and run across some good parts in the process of picking up scrap from my contracts.
Craig: Yes!
Dennis: You don't need any kind of a permit in Montana. Just load it up and haul it in. I talked to the scrapper, he wouldn't even tell me where they were going to haul it in.
I just re-read what I wrote and should make it clear that there were not 26 engines, there were 2 1926 engines and 5 or 6 older ones. Two non-starter. Lots of taper leaf springs, closed spool rear ends, radius rods, frames, etc. etc.
Louis, price in Glasgow right now is about $150 a ton, down from a little over $200 in April. The Chinese must have enough steel to build cars out of for awhile.
Makes you wonder what's going through their minds, doesn't it? Maybe is some thing within the family or spite work or what ever. But still it's intriguing. Good Luck with your chase.
So for $200 a ton they can get it from the scrapper on the sly.
That photograph reminds me of what happened to my deceased neighbors old cars,tractors and you name it that went to the crushers.
The old guy died and had a no count son-in-law who wanted the farm and quick cash.
The son-in-law called the local scrappers and had them come out with a crusher to get rid of all the iron and metal and haul off the rest. It took them 3 weeks to crush and move what was left that was to big for their equipment.
There was the remains of several T's and quite a few cars from the 30's and up. It was a 4 acre lot full of old this and that and about half old cars and trucks. The rest was scattered in the near by fields
I would go up to his place when I was a kid and dig for hours for old stuff.
Man it sure hurt to and see the destruction of a gold mine of old cars and parts.
Stan, I could hear John Denver singing the song this line is from as I viewed your photos.
"Yes, and joy was just the thing that he was raised on
Love is just the way to live and die
Gold is just a windy Kansas wheatfield
And blue is just a Kansas summer sky."
Stan that's a SHAME, I sold my 26 TT cab and doors yesterday, I NEED a top windshield frame Pivot that attaches to the cab that the slide knob screws onto to hold open the windshield it is sort of tri-angle shaped w/ a appendage on it to screw this knob onto, it has 3 screw mounting to the truck cab
Just makes me want to cry when I see stuff like that. When my grandfather passed a few years ago, his 50 x 50 shop was full of stuff. Car parts, dozer parts, dozer manuals, etc. My dad made sure that the items that could be used went to a good home first. There wasn't a lot of T stuff,so we kept that, but all the dozer stuff (including some antique manuals, etc,) went to people that could use it, or the heavy equipment museum. Ended up scrapping very little.
What makes no sense to me is the bids on the parts woulda been the same if not a bit more from folkes wanting to buy it as T parts instead of scrap.Chances are he is looseing money.So where is his logic?
Same thing happened in NC when I lived there. Guy hired Kruze Auctions to handle his auction of cars, which were hidden on his property in the trees. Some cars were full of crap up to the window and others had trees growing through the engine compartments. Most were restorable.
However, when complete 57 Chebbies were going for 200 bucks, the dude decided he didn't want to sell them.
I personally heard Dean Kruze say: "I don't know if he's going to sell or not, but I'm getting my fee, Regardless!"
That is sad Stan, Maybe this will cheer you up a little. I saved a old car from the scrappers last week. A friend at work told me about the a man who was clearing a estate for his family The last thing was to get rid of the heavy stuff in the old garage that had been there since 1962 He was going to call the scrap man! but I call at the last mintute. what I got was a 1923 Buick 6 chassie and 4 old engs. The buick was in amazing cond. still had the pinstiping on the wheels and much of the orig. paint on the frame. I was load this car on the trailer and came back for the engs. He had found the bill of sale from 1962 I was shocked to find they had paid 750 dollars for it in 62! Thats a lot of money to pay for a old buick chassie in 1962... unless it was NEW yes new the car came from the univerity of washington in 62 it was a class project in 23' to disasmble a new donated buick and reassable it. sill learnning more about this as it just happen to me 2 weeks ago. Saved from the scrapper!
You would THINK having a father with such collector status would have instilled SOME notion of preserving the past.
I guess that's what money does to some people.
It reminds me of the cap that says: "Instant A-hole......just add beer" except in this case sub money for beer.
Pity.......
He is actually pretty personable and has some T's of his own, I don't know what led to this. I blame a lot of it on the auctioneer who didn't have much of a clue and pretty much thought this whole bunch of stuff was nothing but junk. It was, but..........
There wasn't a lot of stuff to buy, I bought 4 trucks, the touring car in this picture sold for $600, I didn't bid against a friend who wanted it but sure would like to have bid, it had a correct engine and a very nice body. I took these pics after the auction, but hardly anything had been loaded off the pallets, the car was on his trailer along with some parts he bought.
I bought the AA truck with the green hood, the C cab and the one with solid tires and a cut off square cab. Also bought a very nice square cab that's not in this picture. Never thought to take some pics before I loaded up.
Craig, this guy is the son-in-law. A nephew was in charge of the auction. A lot of it is that these people just have so much money it makes little difference to them whether the stuff brings anything or not. They want to be selling big machinery, not junk trucks. After three or four years in the auction business he has a new $60,000 Dodge pickup, a $20,000 cashier trailer and a big wireless sound system. He had four other auctioneers working this piddly little auction. If he made $500 when the bills were paid I'd be surprised. After 30 years in the auction business in Montana I can't afford a new pickup and all the fancy stuff. He is trying to buy a spot in the business. The stuff had been highgraded pretty hard, too, before the auction and it's fair to say they didn't have much to sell. Mostly a few shop tools, a pretty nice gas air compressor and a few items that got up into the hundreds of dollars but not many. They bought back some tools -- it was pretty obvious -- and sold pallets of old parts, shop junk and etc for $2.50 and $5.00. There were a few nice antiques and they ran two rings right from the beginning even when they only had 10 or 12 people in the building. Outside they started with maybe 25 guys, the crowd built up in an hour or so. The highest price of anything the entire day that I heard was $1900 for an almost new Frontier grass mower but there was a John Deere swizzle stick mower that may have brought more.
It was actually a good auction for me. I figured there were 6 to 10 T guys there. I ended up hauling a couple trucks 200 miles to my ranch because they had to be off of there by Tuesday. I put 1800 miles on my pickup, stayed 4 nights in motels and one night at my sisters, cost me a ton of money and almost a week to go. I doubt I will ever come out too well on it but it's always a gamble when you are buying and selling.
Well at the very least we know there is still stuff like this showing up. I have to come back to Montana Stan, I miss it.
Thanks for clearing that up Stan.
At least the entire family hasn't been moneyfide........ LOL
Rich guys go figure. I hope his wiener falls off.
@ Mike >>> <snicker>.......
AIDs. Massive chance i could turn any one of those wrecks into a 1 or 2 complete cars. i cannot buy even a light socket here yet all those pristine cars get burnt for commies. Disgusting. Dirty commies.
Stan there is a fellow in New mexico looking for a C-cab, email me and I'll give you his phone number danuser88@ktis.net
Thanks John, did it. I'll have the C cab with the express box on my web site in a day or two. Too busy right now.
I dont see why anyone has a right to be mad at a guy for sending this stuff to a scrapper, each and everyone of u guys had a chance to buy this stuff, to bid it up and buy it. there was a auction and u didnt attend it(other than a few that did go) to buy the stuff.Stan and a few others did there job and bought some, but as he said, not really much money to be made for the work and time he spent in buying and retreiving it.Location had a lot to do with the price of the items, advertising also had to do with the price of stuff,even if the auctioneer didnt advertise very well, there was T people that knew about it, and didnt pass the info on either. some of the pallets of stuff went from 2.50 to 5 bucks, hell he lost money on those, figuring time and money they had into getting them ready for sale.If they would have sold that stuff on the hill, no one other than a scrapper would have went and cleaned it all up, even if a T guy would have bought it, most would have left junk laying around. to have to get cleaned up, theres got be worth it,if theres not much it isnt work it for a scrapper to clean it up so the owner still has a mess laying around.I just dont see that its the sellers fault that it went to the scrapper.
Mike, Well put!
Well,at the same time Mike a person like myself on the other side of the country sees good quality parts go to waste like that is annoying.You dont find parts like that around here.
What you do find,is much worse shape.
It was a terriable waste,and frankly the man is still looseing money selling it for scrap.Had T'rs bought it and left half of it,he woulda still made more money.
i never had a chance too buy it
Say I had enough money to buy the Mona Lisa. Would it be OK for me to burn it just for the hell of it? After all, it WAS MINE. I can do whatever I want, right?
Kep, yes u had a chance,U could have searched the the US auctions, like most of us have to, and came over here and bought it, paid for a container and shipped it home, granted it might not have been cost effective, but u could have saved it, and stored it for another 30 40 years like its been and sold it thru the years and lost money on it.but u could have saved it.
Mack, U to could have done the same thing, searched the auctions, came out, or hired someone do the work for u, and saved it from the scrapper, again,it isnt worth it, money wise, so in order for u to save this stuff, that someone thinks it worth something,people need to step up and put ther money into it, the feller had a auction, and after that the ball is in your court. u say this stuff isnt around u, thats all the better for u to step up and buy it, u would have a good place to market it.
yep Hal u could have, but lets compare oranges to oranges, mona lisa,one of a kind.... Model T's 15 million
T's are prettier. I never like old Mona. Other than DaVincci's name on the bottom, I don't see the big deal. Gotta lot more respect for his engineering abilities than his painting talent. At least his paintings don't look all blurry like that Monnit guy.
What planet are you on? i live in reality.
Kep, I dont think u understand, The reality is most of it is junk, not worth the time or money to buy it move it, keep it, thats why its goin to the scrapper, dont be mad at the seller, dont think i dont live on a real planet, I load containers to Austraila each year with parts and cars in them, I know it can be done.but not that mid years stuff,I know people will make money on them, and they do it over and over again. but that rusty old field iron is tough to sell. im sure the man wants his place clean when the sale is done.
Mike
You are completely right on this subject. Very well said. I support your statement 100%. People talk about saving all the T parts in the world but not everyone wants to own and maintain the junkyard.
For some reason I have been drawn to rusty old steel since I can remember. Anywhere I saw it driving down the road, hiking in the woods, exploring... it didn't really matter what it was I was always intrigued. Could I identify it? how did it come to be there? who owned it? what kind of life did it have? why was it abandoned? who owns it now? This of course extends to all sorts of older historic and antique items but was always strongest with cars. When I got older I could spend hours crawling around in junkyards, daydreaming forensically piecing together clues that made up stories of what led to the sad demise of these vehicles and how I would have saved it. It has always seemed so foolish to throw away anything that had simply gotten old. Houses, cars, historic buildings all destroyed in the name of progress and often replaced with something less practical and beautiful. Mike you bring up a valid but purely logical point but what does trying to resurrect an OBSOLETE vehicle have to do with logic? Anyone involved in this HOBBY and or supplying this market without some emotional attachment is purely capitalistic. And Mike C if I was some rich cat like Johnny Depp or better yet the government saw fit to give over a couple thousand acres of "desert wasteland" for the purpose of outdoor storage of historically significant machinery, I WOULD run it! Man what a pipe-dream!
WHat a great post, Rik. You have summed up in one (long) paragraph exactly how I feel and view my interest in neat old stuff - stuff that had a history, a life. Cars, books, hand tools, farming equipment, you name it.
Imagine if this guy (who from the sounds of it ain't exactly poor) had simply donated these auction "left-overs" to a couple of high schools and technical colleges. Some high school kids probably would have mowed his whole field after cleaning up every last nut and bolt in return for a chance to rebuild a PRACTICALLY RUST FREE car! (at that age I might have given the proverbial left nut). I wince when I look at the pictures of those early cowls on the frames and think of the swiss cheese we work with(hey Kep)up here in the frozen north (BC Canada). Now that same guy is buying it back in the form of chinese steel parts for his tractors! The irony....
Stan,
You take some beautiful pictures.
I miss Montana.
Some days I think God left the back gate open.
Jim
To put another brighter note on this; I spoke to someone down this way this weekend who had recently purchased a car from an auction in Wolf Point. I don't see it amongst what is pictured, but surely can't have been more than one auction with Ts in Wolf Point, MT
There it was sitting in the drive of their farm as I went by. Screeched the brakes, whirled around, where the heck did you get that?!, etc etc. They were quite excited. Not their first T, so that is good, but certainly not the prettiest on the planet. I donated some rough rear fenders to their cause as well. That one at least avoided the scrapper. For those of you googling Wolf Point to see where this all went down, try Silesia, MT. which is the location of this Ts new home.
It's sad to see good and faithful machines going to the smelter. But fortunately, there will always be plenty of Tin Lizzies.
I can't help but be reminded of places like Kingman, Arizona and Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, where scenes like this were commonplace shortly after WWII.
These are P-51 Mustangs, P-40 Warhawks (very rare) and P-47 Thunderbolts (extremely rare—a little over a dozen in flying condition and worth about 1.5 million bucks each).
American bombers came back home from Europe, after the war, but generally speaking, fighters did not return. These fighters were a mix of used, stateside trainers and brand spanking new aircraft that were never shipped out. Heart breaking, huh?
Puts me in mind of what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes.
"I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity."
I generally take the long view when nice stuff goes to scrap or hot rods (same thing to a lot of folks). It's all marked for destruction anyway (even the Mona Lisa) and in the end it's only my own vanity to get upset about it. There are, after all, more important things.
Jeff,
Yes, sooner or later, it all becomes dust. But the Almighty gives each of us a measure of time according to His purposes and how we use it must mean something. An unknown number of people who came before me were the custodians of the relic I drive and they did a pretty good job of preserving it and then, passing down the blessing. So, now it's my turn to enjoy and (hopefully) safeguard it and then, do what I can to see that it eventually passes down to another custodian who will appreciate it.
We've all heard stories of antique cars that were passed down to heirs who had no historical interest and sold them off to people who did. And that's okay. My car was purchased at an estate sale by the previous owner and, for now, it's mine and I'll enjoy the blessing while it lasts.
As for the further-reaching issue to which Solomon was alluding: Those who don't believe in miracles need only look up at the sun, and those who don't believe in eternity need only contemplate a universe that goes on forever in every direction.
Jeff and Bob : Thank You for just being who you are and how you think . ALL THE BEST from Oregon ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Doug
Ohh look the graveyard has no intact tombstones someone smashed them and stole all the little letters off them. Hey now they stole the fire hydrants. Can't even go outside nowdays without being attacked by zombies with messed up hair rotting teeth and their skin falling off. Why? p addicts! every last one of them. The sale of scrap metal should be banned or at least have a rule where everyone who brings in their nannas antiques gets an axe through the head. i am the only sane sober person left in my entire district, Everyone else i can see is a zombie. The zombie apocalypse is real and the reason nobody can own anything worth a darn and will destroy western civilization. There is no way i can be wrong just look at the world today.
Jeff and Bob:
Beautiful words!!!!!
Cheers!