The Gazette-Enterprise

SEGUIN — Guy Hurley can wash his cracked, gnarled knuckles all he wants, and he does so several times a day.

But he can never get rid of the black grease ground deeply into the cracks of his hands, and each day when he goes home, Hurley has more new cuts across his knuckles than any two small-town barroom brawlers.

But he’s not a boxer — he’s a “parts puller,” the guy at the pointy end of the auto recycling business who breaks down old cars and trucks into piles of saleable parts — and pieces that will be melted down and reforged into new steel products.

Hurley has worked at Fred Shanafelt’s Shanafelt Used Auto Parts on West Kingsbury for a decade. His partner, Fernando Ramon, has worked there for 26 years.

“We don’t like to get rid of our employees,” Shanafelt jokes. “We like to wear them out.”

Shanafelt’s wrecker service, auto recycling and body repair and paint shops have been fixtures in Seguin since Shanafelt’s father, Ralph, started the towing business in 1947 that in the 1950s expanded into a recycling operation.

“We had to do something with the parts,” Shanafelt said.

Today, Ralph Shanafelt’s original business on an acre of land has expanded into an 11-acre site along Kingsbury with another six-acre lot outside of town.

It’s a busy place.

Ramon owns a ’69 Chevy Chevelle SS 396 — a real enthusiast’s car. He loves working on anything automotive so much he even does some of it on the side.

Lately, he and Hurley have been keeping busy dismantling cars turned in at local dealerships under the federal “Cash for Clunkers” incentive program.

Those vehicles, whose engines have been rendered inoperable, must be dismantled within six months. When it’s a straight deconstruction job, Ramon will use his yard truck — a personal vehicle with a boom and all of his tools on it — to drag the vehicle into a shop that at least gets him out of the sun.

If he’s pulling a part, he’ll have to work out in the sun and the grass, sometimes inside and sometimes even under a vehicle to get at what he needs.

“It’s really kind of hot, and it’s hard to work out in the sun, but you get used to it,” Ramon said. “You drink a lot of water or Gatorade to get through the day.”

Ramon works fast using tools such as a reciprocating saw or an acetylene torch in addition to the more common air impact wrenches because he doesn’t care about the condition of the parts he’s not going to need.

“We take the doors off and the front end, and we take off the drive train and pull the transmission,” he said, holding onto a reciprocating saw fitted with a hacksaw blade.

“I’m taking off the catalytic converters right now.”

The converters are recycled for their platinum and other precious metals. All fluids must be drained and recycled or disposed of properly. Radiators might be recycled for aluminum. Other odds and ends that repair shops or customers routinely need — clean fenders, front clips, door or body panels — will be carefully removed if they’re going to be resold.

Parts that will be resold are inventoried and tagged.

“We put them in the computer and tag them with stock numbers so we know what we have when people come looking for something — and where it can be found.”

Once the remainder of the vehicle has been crushed, it goes out to CMC Steel Texas or another firm like that to be converted into new products. It is far cheaper to recycle steel than it is to smelt it down from iron ore.

Ramon has worked in construction and done a little carpentry, but he’s stayed nearly three decades with Shanafelt because he likes working for him and he likes the work.

“He’s fair and I like it here,” Ramon said. “And I’ve always liked to mess with cars and with engines.”

A short distance away, Hurley works in another bay, pulling a transmission out of an old Honda for a local shop that needs it to repair a customer’s car.

He has to be a little more careful not to damage the transmission or any of its fittings or supporting components, and he’s using a hand ratchet and socket set — and he’s barking up his knuckles, which are dirt and grease encrusted. Blood oozes out of three of them.

“I have small hands,” Hurley said. “I tend to stick them in places I shouldn’t when I’m working on some of these cars. So my hands are kind of rough.”

Like Ramon, Hurley has his own “yard truck” — which he also drives home. It might not be much to look at — mechanics are notorious for not paying much attention to the aesthetics of their vehicles — but a careful look reveals Snap-On brand tools that are the industry standard — and indicate a mechanic who has made a heavy investment in his craft.

“It seems like you have to buy a new set of tools each year for the new things that come out on vehicles,” Hurley said.

Hurley got into the auto recycling business at his father’s knee.

“My father was a mechanic, and working on cars is all I ever really liked to do,” he said. “I sort of inherited the trait.”

When he can, Hurley pulls a vehicle to the shop to work on it.

Out in the yard, the work can be complicated by the terrain — the deep grass and the bits and pieces of detritus that build up at any strip lot — not to mention the weather conditions.

“Oh, man!” Hurley exclaims about the weather. “Especially in the summer. When it’s 103 degrees outside, it’s 120-130 degrees between these vehicles — especially inside them.”

Out in the yard, Hurley’s seen a few small animals over the years and a few snakes. The fire ants can be a constant hassle — both men lay on cardboard when they can.

They also share Shanafelt’s yard with yellow jackets and wasps.

A bigger concern still, he said, is spiders — particularly the two local poisonous varieties, which are the black widow and the brown recluse.

“I check the webs,” Hurley said. “That’s another thing my father taught me. I can tell just by looking at the web whether it’s a spider that’s just going to bite me or one that’s going to kill me.”

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