The Intelligent Yard: Why the Auto Recycling Industry’s Next Chapter Runs Through AI

Artificial intelligence is moving from industry talking point to operational necessity for auto recyclers. In The Intelligent Yard, Chris Daglis argues that deeply integrated AI and data science can improve pricing, inventory, sales and customer decisions, helping recyclers work faster, make better-informed choices and build more competitive, efficient businesses.

Chris Daglis, author of The Intelligent Yard and CEO and Founder of ari. — Chris Daglis

Yvette Jones, Senior Marketing Manager at ari (auto recycler intelligence), powered by Auto PARTnered Solutions, explores why artificial intelligence is moving from industry talking point to essential operational tool for automotive recyclers. Drawing on the CEO and Founder of ari, Chris Daglis’ forthcoming book, The Intelligent Yard, she looks at how deeper use of AI and data science could reshape pricing, sales, inventory decisions and yard performance.

Every industry reaches a point where the tools it has always relied on stop being enough. For auto recycling, that point is now, and Chris Daglis has spent the past year writing a book about exactly why. The Intelligent Yard, Daglis’ forthcoming release, lands ahead of the 83rd ARA Convention & Exposition in Atlanta this October, and it arrives with a clear thesis: recyclers who treat AI and the data science behind it as core infrastructure, not a bolt-on gimmick, are the ones who will define the next decade of the industry.

Daglis is well placed to make that case. As CEO and Founder of ari (auto recycler intelligence), formerly Auto PARTnered Solutions, a SaaS platform built specifically for auto recyclers, he has spent years inside the operational detail that most industry commentary skips past: the phone calls, the inventory searches, the pricing decisions made a hundred times a day on a yard floor. The Intelligent Yard is less a technology manifesto than a field report, drawn from watching recyclers adopt AI tools in real conditions and tracking what actually moved the needle versus what was noise.

From Bolt-On AI to Deep Integration

Daglis draws a firm line between the AI getting airtime at industry events and the AI he thinks actually changes outcomes on a yard floor. A lot of what gets marketed as AI to recyclers today, in his view, is a routing layer with a chatbot skin over it, useful for taking a message, not for making a decision. The distinction he returns to throughout The Intelligent Yard is between that kind of bolt-on AI and what he calls deep integration: AI built around how a yard actually decides things, working from vehicle and parts data down to the individual build sheet, and applying the same data science discipline, pattern recognition across thousands of prior calls and sales, not guesswork, that separates a system that can act from one that can only answer the phone.

The book’s central argument is straightforward: the recyclers pulling ahead aren’t necessarily the biggest or the best-funded; they’re the ones making faster, better-informed decisions on pricing, on inventory, on which calls to prioritise, because AI and the data science underneath it are doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Daglis frames this as a shift in what “good operations” even means, and he doesn’t shy away from the harder conversation the industry is having about AI’s impact on jobs and traditional roles on the yard floor, treating it as a subject worth engaging honestly rather than glossing over.

Taking the Moneyball Approach to Sales

That theme carries directly into Daglis’ other commitment at the ARA convention. He’s delivering a session in the ARA Educational Program titled “Moneyball Sales Coaching” – a nod to the idea, borrowed from the famous baseball analytics story, that the recyclers who win aren’t always chasing the obvious metrics. Applied to a yard’s sales floor, that means using data to spot the coaching opportunities and pricing decisions that traditional instinct-led approaches miss. Attendees can expect the session to double as a live extension of the book’s argument: less theory, more of the specific, practical adjustments Daglis has seen change outcomes.

The timing isn’t incidental; ari is using ARA’s convention as the moment to bring new AI-powered tools to market, both aimed at giving recyclers more of that decision-making edge on the floor. Full details will be unveiled during the show, but the direction is consistent with the book’s argument: practical, yard-floor-tested AI, built to solve specific operational friction rather than technology for its own sake. For readers tracking where the AI conversation in this industry is actually heading, the products and the book are two expressions of the same underlying push.

The Intelligent Yard Is Already Taking Shape

For an industry that has sometimes treated AI as a distant, abstract trend, The Intelligent Yard and the conversations it’s likely to generate in Atlanta offer something more grounded: a case, made by someone who has been in the data with recyclers rather than talking about it from the outside, for why the intelligent yard isn’t a future concept. It’s already taking shape. Not as a chatbot bolted onto a website, but AI built into the mechanics of how a yard actually runs, and The Intelligent Yard is where Daglis lays out exactly what that requires.

The Intelligent Yard publishes ahead of the ARA Convention & Exposition, running 14–17 October 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia. Chris Daglis’ “Moneyball Sales Coaching” session runs as part of the ARA Educational Program during the convention.

Visit the ari team at Booth #507 during the ARA Convention & Expo to receive your complimentary copy of The Intelligent Yard and discover how purpose-built AI is helping automotive recyclers work smarter, serve customers faster, and drive better business outcomes.