Oil Market Bust Yields Unexpected Boom For Texas Repo Men

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The price of oil has dropped to its lowest point in years in recent weeks. That's bad news for almost everyone in oil-producing parts of the country.

But there is at least one business that's booming in the oil patch.

Walk around Ryan Peck's impound lot on the south side of Corpus Christi, Texas, and it's easy to see he's busy.

"We just got a few pickup trucks, couple brand-new trucks, 2015s, couple work trucks," Peck says. "These are all vehicles that are not getting redeemed, that are fixing to go to the auction."

Peck, who owns Superior Auto Recovery, isn't a car salesman. He a repo man, and he's been repossessing a lot of trucks lately. So many that it's even caught his attention. "In our business, there's trucks that we normally don't pick up: three-quarter-ton diesel trucks, 1-ton trucks," he says.

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One of the trucks on the lot yields a few hints: in the bed of the truck, tools and wrenches — equipment that was once used in the oilfield.

Peck says during the drilling boom that started around 2009, oil workers bought a lot of these expensive trucks. Now the boom's over, and they can't make payments. So he's doing plenty of work in the nearby oil town of Alice.

Alice has streets with names like "Energy Avenue" and "Industrial Boulevard." These are where big oilfield service companies brought jobs during the boom. When the bust came, the workers were the ones hardest hit.

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