Expert Interview: Craig Halverson @ Nordstrom Auto

Caroline: What are the most important things someone should look for when buying a used car?

Craig: When buying a used car, I would say, look at what the most common failures on that make and model of the car that you’re looking at. Do a little research to see if this one is prone to breaking.

Also, what’s the price–maybe you don’t care if you have to replace the engine, but price and your abilities are going to dictate if that’s going to be a good car for you or not.

Are there active recalls on that vehicle? How many more miles are left on that vehicle? Does it fit your needs? Do you need more room? Are you going back and forth to college, or do you need to haul kids around? Does it have the space? Space for what your daily, weekly needs are going to be?

My next question seems to draw many different opinions. Let’s say you have a 2010 car that is known to have a lot of issues with things breaking under the hood, and your body shop says “sell it yesterday”, but someone else in the industry says “if it works pretty well and you love how it drives, you know, keep it until it dies.”

What are your thoughts on getting rid of a car that you know the value will go down, but it’s not too expensive to tune up, and you love driving it versus keeping it forever?

Craig: I think that’s a common scenario that people find themselves in. I have four children that are now all out of the house, but they all had cars and you had to think “is this one worth keeping with some money into it, or should we look for another vehicle?”.

And sometimes you’ll look at that repair cost and, for example, you have a vehicle with a bad engine, if it fails, what’s it going to cost to replace it? Well, after the replacement cost is the vehicle still worth that amount? And what could you replace it within the current market? If your market is a sub $6,000 vehicle, there may not be that many superior vehicles to what you’re already driving, right? So maybe driving it until it goes out is the thing to do. But then also, too, if you sell it now, you could take that money and put it towards a better vehicle. So you trade-off where you spend your money–now or later. Sometimes you can roll the dice, and it lasts a whole lot longer until maybe you have a different job, or your living conditions are different, meaning you have more disposable income and you can buy a newer car.

Vehicles: Your favorites to work on and electric cars

Caroline: That is helpful! Appreciate that thoughtful answer.

Are there any vehicles that stick out as super interesting that you’ve gotten to dismantle or have had in your lot over the years?

Craig: We’ve had a lot of really interesting vehicles! We are fortunate that we get a lot of newer GM vehicles or really late-model vehicles, so we’ve done everything from Corvettes to the Sonics, to the Bolt electric car.

It’s fun to dismantle the really expensive trucks and some of the fancier cars.

We did at one time get a bunch of electric Silverados. That was pretty interesting. It always kind of piqued my interest, the technology behind that. It was a number of years ago, but it was just neat seeing how the technology was back when they were very first starting. It was also neat seeing the technology and how it’s designed. There are some fun things that maybe you could do with some of the electric cars like doing some retro cars with electric motors.

We have a salesperson here that’s really into building his own hot rods and we tried to make an electric hot rod. It didn’t quite pan out like we thought, but that’s something that’s always been intriguing to me, but I don’t get to dismantle too many cars here anymore.

Caroline: What are you most looking forward to for the future of Nordstrom’s or the salvage industry in general? And, what’s something you’re nervous about?

Craig: I’d say I am looking forward to just the growth of our industry into different marketplaces where our used parts can find a home for people that want alternatives to buying new, OEM, etc. It’s nice to supply something that can save people money and love that recycling is recession proof.

I think we just need to get more familiar with different marketplaces and different people, as I see. For example, the PRP network is expanding and moving west and Nordstrom’s being on the west side of that is exciting.

For the things that worry me — I would say some of the ongoing changes, specifically the insurance industry and just the struggle that shops have to find the right collision parts.

Also — how do we keep that confidence with the mechanical shops? They use our parts if there’s a failure, so it has to be good for both sides. How do we present ourselves to both the insurance industry for collision parts and also be there for the mechanical repair shops so they’re comfortable using our parts.

Caroline: Yeah, we’re hearing that some shops don’t have the equipment or the confidence to calibrate the newer parts. Hopefully that evolves and shops can gain access to the needed equipment and/or feel confident in helping install those parts.

Craig: Yeah, you do wonder! You know, shops are going to have to consolidate more just because of the expense of the equipment to do all of the calibration and the testing.

Right now, there’s still enough older vehicles that shops have 5-10 years left to be open, or whatever they want to do, they’re still going to be okay. But, you know, someone young and starting out, it’s a significant investment to have the right tools to repair mechanical or collision.

Caroline: Last question: Have you rebuilt or stocked any Teslas at Nordstrom’s? Or do you avoid those cars?

Craig: No! We try to do electric vehicles any opportunity we can. We had to really work hard to get a Tesla but we got one and we said: “let’s try to sell it as a repairable”. And then it didn’t sell!

The closest authorized Tesla repair facility, I believe, is in Omaha, so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it or not, but there’s not quite as many Teslas in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota area. But there is a number. I’ve got two relatives that have Teslas in Sioux Falls, and they love them.

We do a number of electric vehicles, and we’ve been really trying to help the industry with some documentation and just procedures with electric dismantling.

In fact, tomorrow we have our conference room being used for a hybrid vehicle handling conference for local tow yards. This will be the second time we’ve hosted this conference, and they bring out some equipment to share. They’ll have it in our parking lot to show off some of the new tow handling equipment that they have from some of those vendors in that industry, but they’re going to conduct a class on how to properly handle Tesla or any other electric vehicle for safety, because they can be dangerous. And so we’re able to be a part of that and have some of our technicians in that class as well.

It’s pretty neat, pretty exciting.

Caroline: Well Craig, thank you so much for your time today! I really enjoyed speaking with you and learning from you. Wishing you and Nordstrom’s Auto the best of luck moving forward.