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Wrecking yard

place for storage and dismantling of used vehicles

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ1230600
Source-derived summary

A wrecking yard (Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian English) known as a scrapyard (Irish, British, and South African English) or junkyard (American English), is a business that dismantles wrecked or decommissioned vehicles. Its usable parts are sold for vehicle repairs, while unusable metal parts are sold to recycling companies. Other terms include wreck yard, wrecker's yard, salvage yard, breaker's yard, dismantler, and scrapheap. In the UK, Ireland and South Africa, car salvage yards are called car breakers, and motorcycle salvage yards are called bike breakers. In Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, they are often referred to as wreckers.

Types of wreck yards

Automobile wreck yards are the most common type, but junkyards for motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, buses, small airplanes, boats, and trains also exist.

Scrapyard

A scrapyard is a recycling center that buys and sells various types of scrap metal, including iron, steel, stainless steel, brass, copper, aluminum, zinc, nickel, and lead. They may also purchase electronics, appliances, and metal vehicles. Scrapyards sell their metal accumulations to refineries or larger scrap brokers. Metal theft is a common issue, as thieves may steal valuable metals like copper to sell to scrapyards.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wrecking yard” as place for storage and dismantling of used vehicles. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 190-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Wrecking, yard and place can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as place for storage and dismantling of used vehicles. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1230600. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wrecking yard”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wrecking yard primary sources, Wrecking yard archive and Wrecking research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Wrecking yard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.