[Jay S]

I don’t ever remember any salvage yards in Iowa that let you wander around and look at stuff. There is a U pull it in Des Moines, but I don’t think it has been around all that long. I have 4 U pull it yards within a hour of me, one private yard has some older stuff yet down in Pawnee City,NE. The others are owned by the same company: a newer one that is pretty nice in Lincoln, 2 in Omaha, and one in Des Moines.

The first U pull it around here, which is still operational, is at the location of Omaha’s old dump (land fill)…And yes…what a lovely place for a u pull it! When I was a kid the road up to it was not even rocked. If it rained there were be people stuck on the access road and ruts going up and down the hill. A couple times I recall pulling some helpless people out, stuck on the road. (You had too if you wanted to get up the the yard, the road would be blocked, and better have a 4x4). As you can imagine, the yard itself had quite a stench being on top of the dump. The land firmed up over the years, and seems to get safer. But a lot of the cars in those early years, which were up on homemade stands made from wheels welded together were barely able to stand. Dad would go push on the fender before he would crawl under one of the cars. I did also after I watch him shake a car and knock down the 4 cars next to it down. Then there was the adventure of getting one of the forklift operators to pull an engine! If anyone was working near by we would warn them too take a break and watch the show, because more than once the car would come off those stand and was like watching domino’s fall, but with cars!