Copart, Inc. CPRT

The business

An insurance company decides a damaged car is not worth repairing. Copart collects it, parks it on one of 281 yards, photographs it, and sells it at online auction to a dismantler in Ohio, a rebuilder in Texas or an exporter in Dubai. It charges the seller a fee and the buyer a fee. On roughly 15% of volume it takes title and sells the car outright, but 85% is pure fee income on somebody else's inventory.

The moat is land and habit. Yards near population centres with permits to store wrecked vehicles are not easy to assemble, and every large insurer's total-loss workflow runs through the same two platforms. The buyer base is global and bids in dollars, which is why a weak dollar quietly helps the auction price.