A&A Midwest is celebrating its 70th anniversary throughout 2019. Founded by Aaron and Alex Stolberg in 1949, A&A is a leader in engine and transmission core supply, OEM-type replacement parts and automotive recycling.
A&A started out with a narrow focus of selling engines to engine remanufacturers, which served the company well for its first 35 years. In 1985, the next generation joined the company and looked to expand.
First was an expansion into transmissions. It was a natural extension of the existing engine business. Today, A&A has more than 25,000 transmissions in inventory. A&A handles torque converters, transfer cases as well as manual and automatic transmissions.
In 1987, A&A started to receive requests for items the company either could not find or the ones available had very high fall out rates. This led to the establishing of the EngineQuest division. Today, EngineQuest (EQ) has over 500-line items for sale such as head bolts, cylinder heads, timing covers and much more. EQ has set itself apart from others using direct contact with factories and stringent quality standards that guarantees a quality product at a reasonable cost.
Around this time, A&A realized that converting cores was a way to expand its sales. In some cases, it was drilling and tapping additional holes to expand the application coverage. Converting non A.I.R. heads to A.I.R. or adding a mechanical fuel pump to an EFI block. Today, A&A’s machine shop still converts cores to help keep the order fill at maximum.
In the early 2000s, A&A began buying whole vehicles. The need was twofold – first was to get more of the cores customers desire. Second, A&A had developed an export market for complete cut out engines. This further diversified sales and opened markets for items A&A otherwise could not sell. Today, the company processes almost 2,000 end-of-life vehicles annually.
A&A was always a large scrap metal generator from its engine and transmission processing. In order to maximize revenue by filling trucks to the maximum, A&A began buying and selling automotive scrap. Specializing in automotive and non-ferrous scrap, A&A today processes and ships over 20 million pounds of scrap annually.
Now 70 years strong, A&A will continue to grow and look for expansion opportunities.
