That's the as-is price, explains Brett Jensen, the manager. A resident of Salt Lake City, he has been with Pick-n-Pull ever since the national chain opened this operation six years ago.

For a little more money, the customer gets a 30-day guarantee allowing him to trade the part back for another or for credit toward the next part.

Jensen obviously loves the business. "We get some (cars) from wrecks and some just from people around the city. It helps clear all the junkers that are sitting on the curbs," he says.

Sometimes, as when a vehicle was hit by a train, the yard learns a little about its history. More often it's just another car pulled by a tow truck. Arrivals are processed with palm pilots, type and year of vehicle is written on the side, fluids are drained, and then it waits its turn in a holding area.

"We set cars every day of the week and the yard is constantly changing," he adds. "We have to do that because the parts will sell so quickly."

Eventually, whole rows are carted off to be mashed and sold for scrap, and a new set of vehicles makes its way to the "big GM" section.

Chris Tatton, owner of Tatton's Driveline Service in Murray, leans into the engine compartment of a pickup truck, working swiftly to remove a part. "We do drivelines, rear ends, that kind of thing," he says of the service.

He is a regular at Pick-n-Pull, looking for parts every month or so. This particular trip, he is pulling out equipment he'll use to restore a 1954 Chevrolet pickup.

"This is a 350 Chevy," Tatton says. Parts from this V-8 engine should work fine.

When really old vehicles show up, "classic cars . . . they usually come apart pretty quick," Jensen says. When that happens, they post photos of the car on an Internet site to alert collectors.

A Chrysler New Yorker given Internet display arrived complete, he noted, and within a few months "they actually took everything." Even the floorboards were salvaged.

When word gets out, he says, "they converge on it. They 'part-out' like crazy."

When a car has been in a wreck — as evidenced by a crushed windshield or a deflated air bag dangling from the steering wheel — the engine usually goes right away. Regulars know the car was running when it met its demise, and if the engine wasn't ruined in the wreck it is probably in working order.

As you walk down the aisles of rock chips, examining car after car, the scene becomes slightly surreal. A hood is propped open by a tailpipe, a silvery air filter gleams like a work of art, a Jeep's interior is coated with the red dust that the car kicked up before it rolled in the southern Utah desert.