Maynard and Radar are the last of the junkyard dogs

Maynard’s Auto Parts and Wrecker Service is this week’s “WLAF Business of the Week”

**Maynard Sweat is in his happy place, his shop, at Valley View.**

LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF)- Joey White, T.J. Sparks, Delano Parrott- one-by-one, they and several others, have all gone away and so have their junkyards. But there’s one man, along with his dog and cat, who is still keepin’ on; Maynard Sweat. “If I live to be a hundred, and am able, I’m gonna be right here. Because I love it,” said the youthful looking Sweat as he sat behind the counter at his valley business.

See the full photo gallery from WLAF’s Charlie Hutson HERE.

**Maynard’s Auto Parts covers a lot of acreage along Clawson Road near old Highway 63 east of La Follette.**

While everyone else was in class at La Follette High School, young Maynard Sweat was in class, too. However, his classroom was up the road a piece, and he was under the tutelage of one Joey White at White’s Junkyard. Sweat learned it all from the lug nuts up about cars and trucks, parts, too, as well as towin’, fixin’ and reparin’ ’em. Based on just how very successful Sweat’s become, he no doubt graduated top of the class back in the 1970s at White’s Auto.

**Maynard’s telling a story of the time Goober Heatherly took a real heavy auto part and tossed it up into a truck like he was shooting a basketball.**

“I moved in at Joey’s when I was 12, and he turned me loose with a truck and had me driving a tow truck by the time I was 14,” said Sweat. He was at Joey’s off and on for the better part of 20 years. He did have a stint at Delano Parrott’s junkyard, about six months, where he further honed his towing skills. “I’d pull cable, whatever he needed me to do, and I’d watch how he used his tow truck,” said Sweat.

**Miniature trucks are lined around Maynard’s office ready to be given to the next youngster who walks through the door.**

In March 1991, Maynard bought about an acre of land on Clawson Road, between the new and old Highway 63s. From there, he started his own business and has since expanded it to several acres for Maynard’s Auto Parts & Towing Service. “Yeah, it’s a junkyard, a salvage yard, and when I was younger those descriptions may have not set well with me, but I’ve been here so long, it doesn’t matter,” said the laughing 65-year old Sweat.

**Tom, who has a roughed up ear and a lame right paw, is best friends with Radar, the dog.**

And about the dog and cat, Sweat ran across the dog, who looked almost starved, at the Frontier Store and then again at another business. He fed her, and she eventually warmed up to him enough to come to the shop with him and has been there for 14 years. “I gave her a name, and it lasted until the kids saw her and renamed her Radar, because of her big ears,” said Sweat. The cat, named Tom, showed up at the junkyard with another cat. Tom stayed. The other cat moved on. Tom and Radar are best friends, and Sweat says they are always on time and do their job day in and day out.

Maynard is a big breakfast eater. “I love it. I really enjoy breakfast,” said Sweat. Something else he enjoys is delivering goodies to business folks and service agencies around the county. He and his wife Becky are out a couple of days every week delivering peaches or berries or donuts to someone.

Though the junkyards of Joey White, T&H Auto, T.J. Sparks, Delano Parrott, Stooksbury, Boyd Hopper, Eddie Nighbert at I-75 Auto Parts, Hatmaker’s, Nolan Leach, Jack Bean and Jack Stout are all gone, Sweat stands alone as a unicorn of sorts in this everchanging world. “I thank Joey, T.J. and Delano. They helped me so much. They were really good men,” said Sweat. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-05/29/2025-6AM-PHOTOS COURTESY OF WLAF’S CHARLIE HUTSON)