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Copart runs giant online auctions where insurers sell wrecked and stolen-recovered cars to rebuilders and resellers.
Copart is the world's biggest online junkyard — except the junkyard is really an internet auction house. When a car gets totaled in a crash, flooded, or stolen and recovered, the insurance company that now owns it needs to get rid of it fast. Copart takes the car, parks it in one of its hundreds of lots, photographs it, and lists it online. Buyers — from small repair shops to international resellers — bid on it. Copart earns money from fees charged to both sides: the seller pays to unload the car, and the buyer pays to take it away.
The real magic is not the cars; it's the land and the licenses. Copart owns or leases huge lots across the country, and in many states it is one of the few licensed places that can handle salvage titles and resell damaged vehicles. That makes it a toll bridge: insurers need somewhere to dump wrecks, and regulators make it hard for new players to build competing bridges. It also keeps expanding abroad, with operations in the UK, Germany, Brazil, and the Middle East. Copart has a couple of big growth engines. One is international expansion, where salvage markets are less developed. The other is its newer business of selling clean-title cars — cars that aren't damaged — for insurers and dealers. It is also pushing into heavy machinery and industrial equipment. Competitors like IAA, which was spun off from Ritchie Bros. and later bought by RB Global, fight for the same wrecked cars, but Copart's scale and lot network give it a real edge.
Willis J. Johnson opened a single salvage yard in California, using the lessons he learned from his entrepreneur father. He brought an entrepreneurial spirit, a strong work ethic, and a real passion for change to a rough, old-fashioned business. The idea was simple: take cars that insurers had written off as total losses and auction them instead of letting them rust away.
Copart sold shares to the public for the first time, raising money to expand across the country. That cash turned a regional salvage operation into a national one.
A year later, Copart bought NER Auction Group, doubling the number of facilities it ran around the country. It was part of a fast push to grow by buying rivals and opening new locations.
Copart became the first auto auction to run its entire business online. That change did more than speed up auctions: it turned Copart from a salvage yard company into a technology company running a global remarketing platform.
Copart bought National Powersport Auctions, a leading auction and remarketing service for powersports. The deal pushed Copart beyond cars into motorcycles and other powersport vehicles, adding new brands and new kinds of vehicles to sell.
After years of strong growth, results for the 2024-2025 winter season came in below what Wall Street expected. Sluggish sales and rising expenses began a long stock decline as the volume of cars flowing through Copart thinned out.
CEO Jeff Liaw stepped down, and Jay Adair came back as chief executive, a job he had held from 2010 to 2024. Adair said the return was not temporary and that he meant to lead for the next ten-plus years, with a growth push built around three pillars.
Copart agreed to buy ACV Auctions for about $1.9 billion, paying cash for each share. The deal took Copart into dealer-to-dealer wholesale auctions for the first time, a way to make up for shrinking salvage volumes. Adair called it the first big move of his return and framed it as building a complete remarketing platform.
The business throws off a lot of cash because it doesn't spend much on new things. It mostly buys land and builds lots, and it buys back its own stock. In recent years it has repurchased a meaningful slice of its shares, which makes each remaining share worth more. The boring truth is that Copart is a fee machine sitting on expensive real estate, and the wrecked-car business is remarkably steady even when the economy wobbles.
Saved answer · last researched 1 Nov 2026