Crushed! The Pain of Junking a Clunker

The guy at the wrecking yard said some people get real emotional when they turn in their cars. I can't say I was teary eyed or anything, but the Blueberry, my 1995 Pontiac FireFly, had served me well during its two years of active duty. I would have driven her another two years if the repair bill for a faulty front axle and fading brakes hadn't totalled $1,000 plus. Then there was the loud muffler (which gave her a sort of sexy, racy sound), the balding tires, the leaking oil, and so on.

Her time had come.

I thought of placing an ad on Craigslist. You can sell anything there, can't you? But then the moral dilemmas started piling up faster than the repair bills. Even if you tell the teenager who wants to buy your beater about the clunking axle and grinding brakes, can you in good conscience sell him the car? What are you going to get for it anyway? Is it worth five hundred bucks to risk the kid's life and your own soul?

The Blueberry wasn't a lemon, but she'd been thoroughly squeezed. Like I said, her time had come.

Green dreams

Besides, we'd been thinking for years about getting ourselves down to one family car. Financially it made sense. Environmentally, it was the right thing to do. But as long as we could nurse one more trip out of the Firefly, it just seemed easier to put the decision off. Our reality is suburbia, an environment predicated on fast food and the internal combustion engine.

We live on the Surrey-Langley border, you see. People in this neck of the woods have been known to pack shaving gear and a toothbrush when venturing out to a bus stop. Then there is the problem of my work requirements: a vehicle is part of the job description. And so on.

Like thousands of others -- make that millions, even billions -- we found it easier to put off the inconvenient truth as long as we could. I mean, who throws out a clock that's still ticking, or tosses a half-full bucket of perfectly good Kentucky Fried Chicken, or cuts up a credit card before it's maxed out?

We use things until they, or we, die.

Then we grab something else, if we're still twitching.

That's where the Scrap-It Program comes in. Someone, somewhere had mentioned you could get cash for your clunker through a government-funded program designed to get greenhouse gas emitters off the road -- an idea so effective it is now launching even in the automaniacal United States.

A shoulder to cry on

Suddenly my old rust-bucket had real trade-in value, as long as I was shopping for a less environmentally stupid way of getting from A to B.

The process is pretty straightforward. If you've got a 1995 or older car that's drivable and has been insured in B.C. for the last 12 months, you complete an online form at www.scrapit.ca and submit your certificate of insurance to Scrap-It. They approve your request and e-mail you a letter, which you take to an authorized wrecker, who will crush your polluting dinosaur in an environmentally sensitive manner. I got my approval the same day I sent in my application.

Amix Salvage & Sales, on the Surrey side of the Pattullo Bridge, is the authorized wrecker in Metro Vancouver, and that's where we met Jonathan, the consoling junkyard guru who was helping people through the emotional trauma of putting down their beloved beaters. When I asked Diana to take one last picture of me with the doomed Blueberry, Jonathan offered to do the honours, thinking both my wife and I would want to be in the shot.

Diana had actually never driven the car, because it was a standard in so many ways.

A man of cheerful contrasts, Jonathan informed us that not everyone gets sentimental about dropping their wheels off at the wreckers. Some actually want to see their cars crushed, deriving ghoulish pleasure from the screech of buckling metal and the pop of shattering windshields or perhaps relishing a moment of sweet revenge for all those times the junker wouldn't start on command.

New wheels

The whole process of transferring the Blueberry from my name over to Amix took about 10 minutes. In a few days she will be a cube of unrecognizable metal bound for the melting pots of China in the belly of a gigantic freighter. For my betrayal, I have received an endorsement slip that allows me seven different incentive options. I can get money toward a newer, more environmentally friendly vehicle; spend up to $1,200 on a bike and accessories; get car-sharing or ride-sharing credits; or (at the very bottom of the list) I can take $300 and say thank you very much.

I'm going for the $1,200 bike package, which also includes six months worth of three-zone, Lower Mainland transit passes (I've got my shaving kit and toothbrush ready). Yep! I've made the transition. I haven't got all the angles figured yet, but I am now officially amongst that growing minority of people who cycle to and from work, slugs (that's snails without protective shells) on the Road Rage Highway. In my case, the commute is 10 clicks each way, ending in gigantic molehills I classify as mountains in both directions.

But that's another story.