Us...
Hey Y'all!
We are David & Bryce. Thank you for supporting our small business. It's our passion to serve this beautiful community of ours, and we couldn't do it without you.
In business, you can have only two of these three things: Speed, Affordability, and Quality. It's important to us to try to find the balance of the best of all three worlds - even though it can be a challenge sometimes. However, above all, our main priority is to keep Elements on the road and cultivate a personal experience for our supporters.
Allow us to tell you our story, and help you get to know us on a more personal level...
•HOW TOASTERPARTS WAS BORN•
As a kid, before I (David Joyce) could even drive, my parents purchased a 2003 Honda Element. My parents were and still are entrepreneurs, and made handcrafted wooden kitchen products like spoons, cutting boards, spatulas, biscuit cutters, and more. My little sister and I would cram together in one of the back seats twice a week to go to craft shows and farmers' markets with my parents. At an early age, I experienced the art of Element stuffing and its unique utilitarian abilities. I loved how the back seats reclined and was fascinated by intricate details like the rubber floors and the fact that it had a tailgate.
As I grew older, so did the Element. By the time I was old enough to drive, the car was still our only family vehicle; however, it was in pretty rough shape. The A/C didn't work, it had terrible suspension, negative camber, and many other issues - it was a work vehicle after all. As I got my licence, I inevitably began to drive the Element to and from my job, since at the time I was the only one who didn't work from home. One day, I woke up, and my passenger window stopped working. It had gotten stuck closed, and with no A/C, it was no fun. Little did I know, this would change my life forever.
As a broke kid working in fast food, not knowing anything about cars, the window stayed broken for almost two years... until one day, I discovered the Element community, and decided to try to fix it. It was on that day I turned a wrench for the first time, and after hours and many cuts from the sharp inner-door metal, I fixed my window, and lit a fire in my soul.
Fast forward to 2021, I purchased my second Element - a 2006 black EX-P 5-speed AWD. At this point, I knew how rare the AWD 5-speeds were. I purchased it for $2000 and drove it an hour and a half home, from Tennessee to my parents' house in western NC. After I got it home, I had a brilliant idea to look underneath... and to my unfortunate surprise, it was rusty... and I mean REALLY rusty. After it broke my heart, I decided I would rather part it out for the community rather than send it to a yard to be crushed - so that's what I did.
Now that this is becoming a book, I'm going to start jumping around a little and shorten this story up. I moved in with Bryce and her family in Wilmington, NC, and took some of the small parts I had left from "BumblE" (the Element I parted out that got its name from the "Save The Bees" licence plate it had on when I bought it), with me and started a shelf in their garage. I quickly outgrew it, and got a 10' x 10' storage unit to house all my parts... this was in Castle Hayne, NC (outskirts of Wilmington) which will be important later.
At this time, I worked a full-time job and did Element parts on the side. I discovered Elements On The Dragon, and knew I wanted to go. Only downside was, the campground was sold out. That's when I met Logan Ogden, who had plans to go, but they got canceled, so he sold me his campsite, and I was able to attend. A while later, he texted me that he would sell me essentially his entire Element parts inventory for just a few hundred dollars. This was a big move for me, and I had to decide if I really wanted to pursue Element parts as a job... luckily for me, a few months prior, I was driving around and thought to myself, "it would be so cool if someone started a huge Element parts business and called themselves 'ToasterParts'", not ever thinking it would be me.
It was in this moment that I knew I needed to pack my bags and go meet Logan. So I bought the ToasterParts domain, drove from NC to northern PA, and loaded my poor Element top to bottom, plus some with parts. From then on, it was history. I became obsessed and fell in love with Elements and the community all over again. Fast forward, I decided to move back to Western NC for several personal factors, so I packed my trailer full and made the move. I got a 10' x 10' unit there, and quickly grew my inventory while also having one of the most challenging and full of personal growth years of my life, all while still maintaining a full-time job. I upgraded to a 10' x 15' unit, then got a Second unit of the same size. I filled those suckers to the brim, and then Bryce and I decided it was time to pick up where we left off with our lives in Wilmington. So for a second time, we loaded up several trailers with the help of my parents and moved back. There, I got two 10' x 20' units back at the same facility in Castle Hayne where we started off, which felt special to me.
During all of this, I started offering parts delivery for large orders (body panel kits, motors, etc) to my out-of-state customers to help offset shipping costs of heavy items, so that we were still able to offer them to the community. I made a trip to Tennessee to deliver parts and install them on a customer's Element, and while I was there, he told me I should start offering parts installs and mechanic work as a mobile service. I had always wanted to travel, and I needed ideas on how to continue to grow the business. Mobile mechanic work had been a thought in my head, but it took it coming from someone else for me to take it seriously. During my move from Western NC back to the coast, I had purchased a small enclosed trailer to help move inventory and use for deliveries. It dawned on me that I could use it as the perfect resource for mobile mechanic work - so I got to work renovating my trailer. For the rest of the year, my name blew up, I worked on hundreds of Elements, traveled from Key West, FL, all the way to Maine, and met some incredible people. I spent most of my time on the road, and in my downtime back home, people would bring their cars to me. Nearing the end of the year, I began to look for yet another building to expand into, except this time I needed a warehouse for my parts inventory, and also a place to do mechanical work.
As I neared the end of my lease for my current two storage units, it was time to make a move. Friends came from far distances to help me move and unpack into my new space. I loaded up a 26' moving truck and had to make more than one trip. ToasterPats moved into what I now call our "shop", which in reality is just a huge commercial-sized storage unit with water, power, and internet. We opened for work immediately on January 1st, 2025, and for the first 16 days, there was an Element in my shop every day.
Fast forward to now, it's July 2nd, and I write this from my workbench- the same place you see my family and friends sitting in the photo. We've had ups and downs, but ultimately, I am happy to be doing what I love. Bryce and I now have a pup we call Josie, and the three of us leave for the biggest work tour I've ever embarked on in just 22 days. We will be gone from July 24th until mid-September, and I am so excited, yet so nervous. We will travel through almost 40 States while we live out of my Element, which has well over 400,000 miles. I plan to document the entire trip, so be sure to follow our socials. I will report back here once we have returned from our trip. Until then, thank you for being part of this crazy dream we are chasing, and supporting our small family business... it means the world to me.
Much love, David Joyce
