Car fleet fire leads to shredder feedstock

A fire that swept through the rental car center at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, Florida, has resulted in more than 3,500 vehicles heading to area auto shredding plants.

The Fort Myers location of Garden Street Iron & Metal will recycle more than 2,000 of the vehicles while another 1,200 will be handled by Nucor-David J. Joseph Co. subsidiary Trademark Recycling, according to an online report by WBBH-TV in Fort Myers.

Trademark Recycling has auto shredders in and Ocala, Opa Locka, Orlando, Rockledge and Tampa, Florida, according to Recycling Today’s 2018 Auto Shredder List and Map.

The article says Garden Street won a bid to handle most of the autos, except about 1,200 that belonged to Hertz Corp., which had an existing relationship with Trademark.

Many of the cars were extensively damaged by the blaze, with WBBH quoting Garden Street’s John Hoving as saying, “It looks like it’s a horror movie or something like that when you have so many cars that are so burned up.”