We'd like to thank everyone again who joined us at our 2025 Upper Midwest Convention! Click here for a gallery of photos from throughout this year's event.

This will be my last letter From the Secretary’s Desk. I will be retiring at the end of May.

Annie Kauffman, the new CARS Secretary asked if I could write an article about my time with CARS of WI.

My husband and I joined CARS in 1972. Mike Ogrezovich asked if I would come on the board of directors? After I asked Arnie if I could, he said as long as he did not have to do anything. So, I joined the board in 1981. Wow that’s a long time ago. I served as secretary on and off for 14 years.

Then in 2009 I was hired to be the Executive Secretary for CARS of WI. These last 16 years have been wonderful. I enjoyed all the time as your Sec. Well, there were times when I thought about quitting. Especially when we were planning the conventions, education programs and meetings, because as you all know, the members that attend these programs. never decide until the last minute whether they are coming or not.

I have met so many wonderful people over the years. There were old-time recyclers and new owners. ARA people are wonderful as well as all the vendors that take their time to come to Wisconsin and introduce us to new laws, equipment, and ways to improve our business. Years ago, I was given a lifetime membership to CARS, so you might see me again in years to come.

My Dad said once you get the grease under your fingernails it will never go away, so at 78 years old you might see me in the future. Goodbye for now.

Love you all.

Sandy

First and foremost THANK YOU to Badger motors for hosting our annual Upper Midwest convention this year. We all know how much time, energy and a disruption to normal business it is. The venue was fabulous. Thank you to the vendors, speakers, and everyone in attendance.

The day started with Shannon Nordstrom speaking about leadership. For everyone that shows Shannon his 45 minute time slot turned into more but it was well worth it. He talked about the importance of employee buy in. He used the acronym CANI: Constant and neverending improvement.

Greg Pederson talked about IRA’s and saving for retirement. You're never too young to start saving for the future. Have you as owners looked into a plan to benefit your employees. Employees if your owner offers a plan are you participating?

Sue Schauls talked about safety and the importance of a safety program. How this relates to OSHA and keeping employees safe. Many times when OSHA does come in they ask an employee about HAZCOM and they give them a blank stare because employees know it as SDS. The CARS (Certified Automotive Recycler) program will help you in many ways get audit ready. Check it out at https://aracertification.com.

Jonathan Kusowski held his annual stormwater meeting and talked to us about in cases of spills, fires, doing improvements in your yard and what to do if you want to add buildings, concrete slabs, etc. for DNR. As we all know Morrisons had a huge fire and what the procedure was for them with the DNR and that fire. Rocki Top added concrete and what the procedure was in their process.

Greg Hubbard gave us an update on the Wholesale Dealer issue and where we are at. Tom Hermann & Robbie Koepp are working with him and have attended hearings on this matter. Throughout the seminar not only from speakers but general attendance we heard talk of EV vehicles and batteries and what we need to do and what can be done. This is not only a huge issue with us but with fire departments and rescue teams. Get with your local fire departments and show them where you store your batteries and the obstacles that they may face if there is a fire at your facility.

Throughout the day it was great to talk to vendors, speakers, and other yards to swap ideas. What works, what doesn’t, how do you do this, or who do use for that? The food from the food truck was excellent. From breakfast to lunch they had us covered. We ended the conference with door prize drawings for employees, raffles, and lots of winners. As employees registered they received raffle tickets for just coming to the event to enter for prizes. There were things from paintings, bird houses, car wash kit, to Milwaukee tools.

Then it was off to the Golden Sands Race Track for an enduro race. Food and soda was provided in the VIP room for us. Although the cars from the yards didn’t do so well I think everyone had a great time.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions please let us know. We are open to them and want this to be for you the salvage owners, managers, employees. Share them with us. Until next time.

Thank you.

Wow, what a great annual CARS meeting we just had! If you were not there, you missed a great opportunity. We had great training sessions by Sue Schaul and Jonathan Kuskowski and a very well-done keynote presentation by Shannon Nordstrom, not to mention time spent greeting old friends and making new ones.

If you were unable to make it you sure missed out. If you were there, I want to encourage you to write down just one takeaway from the day. Write it down and put it where you will see it every day. Leave it up for a couple weeks, you don't have to do anything other than just look at it and think about it for a few minutes. "What is the point of that," you might be asking yourself. Simply this: what you think about will come about. Did you hear a simple little tip on how to do a process differently, or a new idea for a promotional effort?

I personally noted a couple of things down, and they were not all from the sessions. I was sitting in a small group talking about handling returns, when one of the guys mentioned they use a red zip tie on the tag of a part that is being returned. That way, anyone handling the part in the future automatically knows it had been returned once before. Simple little things like that add up to what is an enormous wealth of knowledge in this industry. We are always needing to get better; and we do this by learning from others who have gone down the path we might currently be on and can offer insight.

As Shannon shared in his session, they use the CANI (Constant And Neverending Improvement) way of thinking, and we can all benefit from that. That is what I have written on a sticky note stuck to my monitor, and I am going to focus on that for the coming weeks as a reminder of what needs to happen in our own business.

We always strive to do better and be better, and nowhere that I have ever seen is this better accomplished than in the auto recycling community. There is such a sense of community that it makes working in the industry a real joy. Thanks to all that participated and put the show together, it was in my opinion a great success.

The Upper Midwest Auto Recyclers Convention was held on April 26th, and I was able to attend. As a lot of you know, I semi-retired last year, but am still on the CARS Board. For a one-day show, I think it went very well. I feel this is a good direction to go in the future since everyone is always so busy. Also, the cost was a big plus for everyone. A big “Thank You” to Badger Motors. They did a super job preparing for us and had the place looking good. Also “Thank You” to Sandy, Annie, Gail, Jackie, and Tom for their work at registration, door prizes, and raffles.

I started my trip on Friday, so I could take a tour of Rock Oil. They are really organized and have a clean operation considering they are recyling 3 millions gallons of oil a year. They build a lot of their own equipment, tanker trucks, and a still for recycling antifreeze. Thank you, David, for the tour. They said that their doors are open if others want to take a tour. Just call them to make an appointment.

Saturday started out with a bigger attendance than we thought we would see. We had to grab more chairs from the rack. Thanks everyone for your support. It was really good to see some of the old faces. I thought the speakers were very good for both owners and employees. At the end of the day, the racing was a nice change of pace. “Thank You” Matt Rowe for setting up the night of racing. Just too bad none of the CARS members did well. Hopefully next time.