About

Vans Auto  started in the 50’s when Ted Vander Woude, owner/operator of Deep Rock Service Station in Waupun,WI bought a junk car. Someone then asked if they could buy a part off the car. Another person asked to buy a part from it. Seeing used parts sales as a way to generate revenue, Vander Woude began to operate a salvage yard.

Years later, two men by the names of Tom Zietlow and Duane Schneider met at a swap meet in Iola, WI. Tom was a door finisher with a knack for sales, while Duane, a gearhead since birth, was a maintenance mechanic at a cheese factory. They quickly formed a friendship and took their knowledge of Mopars to start a joint effort buying and selling parts on a very small scale. It wasn’t long before Tom quit his full-time job for a part-time so he could spend the other half of his time selling parts. This was during the dawn of EBay in the 1990’s and Tom realized that selling parts on the internet was easy and profitable. One day, while checking out the Vander Woude local salvage yard which was once the largest in Wisconsin holding over 5000 cars, a conversation Duane would have with Ted Vander Woude would change the course of his and Tom’s lives forever.

While riding back to the office in Ted’s family car after looking at ’68 Charger part Vander Woude mentioned his plans to sell the salvage yard to avoid his wife being stuck with it if something happened to him. Duane’s heart began racing. He then called Tom and while they had no intention of buying a salvage yard, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take their venture to the next level.

The challenge was to come up with the down payment and convince the owners to sell the yard on a third down and the rest on land contract, as they weren’t able to find a bank that would give them a dime for such a cockamamie venture.

It was October 2002 when Tom and Duane took possession of the salvage yard. Now with 3000 cars going all the way to the back 40’s, they had there eyes on selling lots of used parts. After the first year they could see selling used parts was not the way to go. They were often scrapping until late night to make the payment on the yard and putting their home mortgage payments on credit cards.

While cleaning out the old farmhouse on the property, Tom came across some reproduction parts. Listing them on EBay to clear them out, he suddenly saw a market for repro parts. This changed their focus to the reproduction market. Today Van’s is one of the nations largest suppliers of reproduction parts!