Humble Beginnings

From 1945-1952 two U.S. servicemen that had returned from WWII, thus the name, started Victory.  Stanley “Stosh” Kopka owned it from 1952-1967.
  
In 1966 my grandfather (Kurt) and my father (Ken) were renting a small one-acre yard in Melrose Park called A & K Auto Wreckers.  They chose the name “A & K” instead of “K & K” because they wanted to appear first in the phone book.  My father happened to see that Victory was for sale and promptly contacted Stosh.  In a short time a deal was made, but it would take nine months before Kurt and Ken could call Victory home and in 1967, on my father’s 25th birthday, they closed on the business.  The business came with the inventory (approximately 100 junk cars), an old Chevy tow truck, 2 wheel loaders, and a building.
  
In 1975 a fire destroyed the building.  Our existing building was constructed across from the old one.  Over the last 33 years we have made several additions to the building, the most significant came in 1992 when we acquired the property to the west of us. With this acquisition, we moved our customer entrance to the west side of the property giving us a larger parts counter, a building to store our tow trucks, and a large customer parking lot.
  
In 1984, my father became the sole owner of Victory Auto Wreckers, Inc.
  
In 2000, I became president of the company.



Commercial Success

It was my father’s idea to advertise on T.V.  My grandfather was so opposed to the idea that he told my father if it didn’t work, he would personally have to pay for the blunder.  But my father was confident that this would help the business grow.
  
Most people think that the commercial that runs today is our first and only commercial, but they would be wrong. The one that runs today is our “new” commercial.  Our first commercial was a series of still photos that ran in 1980 for a few months until our video was produced.  The second commercial ran from 1980 - early 1985 and featured two employees: Jim Ostrander (who still works for us) and Jose “Louie” Arroyo (who retired in 2004).  The only reason that we stopped using this version was that the tape disintegrated from too much use.  WGN-TV claimed that they couldn’t find the master tape (or they had been using the master all along) and that we had to shoot another commercial. Ron Patris from WGN-TV made up for the error by coming up with the idea of the door falling off…and the rest is history.  
  
The “new” commercial also featured two employees: Luis ? and Bob Zajdel and began airing in May 1985.  Bob became (in) famous from this commercial, appearing on local T.V. and radio shows and having numerous newspaper columns written about him over the years.
  
Interestingly, you can still watch the old commercial with Jim and Jose on youtube.  How they could find a copy and WGN couldn’t is anybody’s guess.
  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLu9hlwig4Q



Employees

We are blessed to have a good group of employees, many who have been with us for decades.