I’m sure you all heard about the cash for clunkers program the government approved a few months ago. Now that the dust has settled, here are the thoughts I have.

First of all, the program was approved months before it was able to be implemented and used. The final rules didn’t come out until a few days before the program began.

Second, the website that we dealers were to use was overwhelmed most of the time, but most especially in the beginning. There were also lots of vague and unclear rules as well as rumors. One of those rumors was that only a certain amount of dealers would be allowed in the program. That caused most to be on line at 6am central time on opening day, along with dealers in other parts of the country, as early as 4 am on the west coast. Of course, that overloaded the system, maybe even caused it to melt down…. It never seemed to recover. Then, there was the next big rumor. It was announced, only on some internet news sites, that the program would be shut down at 8 am the following morning. Any sales not in the system by then wouldn’t be honored. There was a concern that no one knew for sure when the money would all be committed, and what would happen to those last rebates if the money was gone. Think what your reaction would be if you’d bought a car from us, got the Cash for Clunkers rebate, only to have us call you back and say that the rebate was not available because we couldn’t get the sale reported or the money ran out? So, my staff was at the dealerships as late as 1:30 am trying to get all of our sales reported. This, all because the website was so slow.

Other reporting problems were: We’d get a sale rejected, but there would be no explanation what was wrong. The response would simply say that there was an error, or multiple errors. We later found that a rejection was caused by there not being a comma after a persons last name, before their first.

Many dealers (not us) had to stop the program because they had so much money outstanding waiting for government payment,  that they couldn’t do any more. Or in some cases they became worried that the government somehow wouldn’t pay.

The requirement that the engine be destroyed in the clunker trade in vehicles was not a good idea at all. It caused vehicles to have to be hauled, rather than driven to the salvage yard at a much larger cost. It will further cause the price for used engines to go up and be in shorter supply. If the goal was to stop the clunker trade in from ever being used on the road again all that would have been needed is the requirement the title be transferred to a junking certificate. There are many folks who can’t afford any option but to fix up their old vehicle, believe me I know as we help many people in this way from our Birdnow Auto Recycling business at Fayette.

In the end, we got all of the money promised, and sales were good for a month….