MARYSVILLE — Here’s a bit of friendly advice: Don’t use the J-word at Covey’s Auto Parts.
A while back, a prospective customer called and asked if Covey’s was a junkyard. Tim Covey, the younger half of the father-son team that runs the business, said that it wasn’t. But they had the part in stock; did he want to come and pick it up?
The Coveys are polite people, and they aren’t likely to be offended if you slip and say the word. They’ll just point out that they sell used car parts, and that any “junk” they come across winds up in a metal compactor.
“This business used to be known as a ‘junk’ business,” Hal Covey said while surveying his back lot one morning last week. “This is far from the junk business.”
Every functioning part of the car is used at Covey’s — like at a butcher shop, except it’s engines and carburetors that line the shelves instead of pork chops and sausage links.
“Literally, every part that’s on a car, you could probably find here,” Hal Covey said, standing in the shadow of a shelf twice his height lined with hundreds — maybe thousands — of parts. Covey’s specializes in used parts from Mazdas, Isuzus, Suzukis and some Ford lines.
The cars arrive smashed and dented, remnants of roadway collisions. Their parts are stripped, tested and retested, catalogued, and sold for a fraction of their original price — usually about 50 percent.
There are worse businesses to be in at a time when Americans are looking to scale back costs in the face of economic recession. Dealer prices start looking steeper, and suddenly do-it-yourself repairs don’t seem like such a bad way to go.
But though customers are coming in, the used-part business has still taken a hit from the recession. Covey’s has fared better than a lot of family-owned businesses in Marysville, but that doesn’t mean sales are up.
“There are some things that are recession proof — this really isn’t,” Hal Covey said. “There were more do-it-yourselfers before. Now, the only thing you know how to do is put gas in it and drive it. That was different years ago.”
He says he’s bothered by how many empty storefronts there are in the area, and how many car lots on Broadway in Everett are empty.
“That’s happened in the last year or so,” he said.
Hal Covey points to the ground a lot during tours of his storefront, his garage, the two acres of carefully numbered cars and trucks lined up out back. He points out how few oil spots there are on the cement, and how the drains are protected from oil and fluid runoff.
For people who work around axle grease and antifreeze, the Coveys are pretty tidy people. When a customer dripped transmission fluid on the floor of their shop last week, it prompted a several-minute discussion between Tim Covey and his mother, Ann, the bookkeeper for Covey’s. They asked each other where the bottle of Simple Green was, why the floor was still streaked after it was wiped down, and shouldn’t employees take transmissions right out to the customer’s car?
The Coveys are fairly new to the auto-part business. Hal Covey is a general contractor by trade, and for years he owned a flooring store in Seattle’s Wallingford neighborhood.
But about five years ago, when Tim started auto racing, the family started seeing the value in a specialized used-part shop. They started at a small indoor workspace in Everett but moved to Marysville three years ago.
“A lot of people in this business are millionaires, but we’re not,” said Hal Covey. “The best thing we get is having customers call up and say, ‘I really appreciate how helpful you were when my wife was in the other day.’”
Covey’s Auto Parts
5438 47th Ave. NE, Marysville
800-809-5334
www.coveysmazdaparts.com
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