Copart Opens New Location to Prepare for Severe Weather

Copart has opened a new location in Lumberton, N.C., meant to serve as a catastrophe response facility during severe weather events along the United States’ North Atlantic coastline.

The core focus of the new 90-acre facility will be to store vehicles affected by severe weather events.

“Copart is committed to having the most agile and rapid vehicle recovery response for clients and communities when severe weather strikes,” said Copart CEO Jay Adair. “Opening our new location in Lumberton gives Copart more space to store vehicles that are recovered from weather catastrophes in the Coastal Plains region.”

Just last year, in March 2017, Copart opened its 14^th Florida location in Okeechobee. The core function of the Okeechobee location was also to serve as a facility to store weather damaged vehicles.

Roughly five months after that location was opened, a severe weather event, in the form of Hurricane Irma, made landfall in Florida and destroyed hundreds of thousands of vehicles.

Soon after the hurricane, while Copart was still surveying the total damage caused by Irma, Copart CEO Jay Adair told Vehicle Remarketing that he expected his company to process a little under 10,000 additional salvage vehicles as a result of the hurricane.

He did not predict these additional salvage vehicles to be a problem, however, as he had enough real estate to store 50,000 additional vehicles — in part due to the openings of locations such as the Okeechobee facility.

Related: Salvage Auctions Estimate Volume of Hurricane-Damaged Vehicles