Getting rid of a junk car is one of the most complicated processes you will go through in your life. It might sound as simple as “find a place and sell it for cash,” but there are a ton of loopholes that you will need to jump through in order to move on from your totaled vehicle.
Altogether, there are four ways that you can get rid of your junk car, and this article will go into detail on how all of them work.
1. Take Your Junk Car to the Junkyard
The concept is incredibly easy to understand; a junk car SOUNDS like it belongs in a junkyard. The word junk is in both of their names! I can just take my junk car to the junkyard and get a decent amount of cash into my pocket.
I’m gonna have to ask you to hold up your excitement there because there are several questions you have yet to ask yourself.
The first question: How are you going to get your junk car to the junkyard? The junkyard will not pick the vehicle up for you, so you will need to pay someone with a tow truck to do it for you.
Most tow trucks will charge you $100 just to take your vehicle to the junkyard. And it’s not like you would be comfortable driving the junk car to the junkyard yourself. It IS a junk car that you are looking to get rid of.
So you have yet to make any money on this venture and you are now out $100 from your pocket. “That’s okay,” you might be saying. “Every business venture requires a little bit of an investment.”
That brings us to our second question: How are you going to get yourself to the junkyard? The tow truck is not allowed to have passengers in their vehicle or the vehicle that they are towing, and the junkyard will not handle their business on the phone. This means you will need to find an alternate way to get to the junkyard.
If you are lucky, a friend or family member will bring you to the junkyard. If you are not that lucky, you will need to pay for a service like Uber or Lyft to get you to the location. That can cost you anywhere between $15 to $30 just to get to the junkyard.
Then another $15 to $30 to get back home! So now you are anywhere between $130 to $160 in the hole. “Just another investment you have to make,” you say.
So now you are at the junkyard, preparing for that hard-earned payday that you are expecting to make from your investment. Before you get the final number, the attendee will need to weigh your vehicle.
Typically, a junkyard will purchase a junk car by the Ton. One Ton will net you $150. The average car weighs 2 Tons, so you can expect to make close to $300.
So $300 profit minus $130 investment means you made $170 for all of that time and energy. And if you do not like the quote, you will get into further financial complications with getting your vehicle home.
Our expert evaluators can help you get an accurate estimate for your cars value, FAST!
2. Sell Your Junk Car Online
This is another process that is deceptively complicated. You think, “All I have to do is post my vehicle online and I’ll make my money back.”
This is all WRONG. If you are selling your vehicle online, the person purchasing the vehicle will want to do an expectation of the product that they are purchasing. Any little error they find will give them probable cause to lower the asking price that you have posted.
This is called haggling. Haggling can take a significant amount of time to go through, and it can end just as quickly as it has begun. That means you can be spending months haggling with strangers online while your junk car sits comfortably in its location.
And if you were hoping to use this money to purchase a new vehicle, this will slow down that part of the process as well.
3. Sell Your Junk Car for Parts
Breaking a car down is a complicated job! You need some sort of mechanical knowledge before you even begin to dig into the vehicle or else you can accidentally damage a valuable part.
Most top-quality mechanics can take about a week to tear a junk car down and evaluate the parts to determine if they can be salvaged. If this is your first time breaking down a vehicle, it can take much longer to do.
Once you break down the vehicle, you will need to find a buyer that wants your part. And just like the process of selling a vehicle online, you will need to deal with hagglers that are trying to get the best value for their buck.
You could be going back and forth with a person for weeks and not make any money off of the exchange. Just like selling your car online, selling your car for parts can take a lot of time as well.
4. Sell Your Vehicle to DamagedCars.com
Unlike the previously mentioned processes, selling your junk car to DamagedCars.com is simple. Just go onto our website and ask for a quote! We will send you a questionnaire and a list of items that we need to review before sending you a quote.
Once we get these in our hands, our experts will look over everything and give you a no-obligation fair market value quote that is good for a week. And we perform no final inspection when we pick up the vehicle!
If you like the price, you can accept the offer and schedule a pick-up time and place that our tow truck can meet you at. As soon as the vehicle is on our tow truck, the money will immediately be available to you.
