When I have called junk yards to take my old car husks, they always come in at a couple hundred bucks, max. When I call one of those We take your car places, it is multiple hundreds of dollars.
Right now I have two nearly dead vehicles I want to junk. Can I cut out a middle man and make decent money on them?
do you have a local scrapyard and if they have a shredder at that location they will pay the most. but you have to prep car plan on removing gas tanks and tires but strip rad, converters alternator and starters they will give higher money for those items
I don't know about a local scrap yard. There is a neighborhood junk yard kind of deal but they are the ones who always offer me the least. Then there's a Pick-n-pull about an hour away. There must be more but I don't know of them. And I don't have a tow vehicle. And I live in the middle of nowhere and some of the tow-it-away-for-cash people don't like to come out this far.
Junk yards never seem to pay as much as metal scrap yards. Junk yards have to store the cars, have the labor to take parts off the car over an extended time and require more acreage. For a scrap yard, the car can be in and out in a day or two. They do require a lot more machinery, but it's all about volume. Our company does a bit of work for OmniSource. I'm always amazed when I visit one of their yards. One of the yards gets BMWs from the Spartanburg plant that are scrapped for whatever reason. They are escorted to the site and go straight into the shredder. It breaks your heart.
Those guys scrap your car, unless it is easily fixable in which case they might fix it and sell it or sell it to someone who will fix it for more than scrap value.
But essentially it's a recycling business. They make money because most people dont know what cars are worth in scrap and think turning something you dont want into a stack of 20s with a phone call is magical.
Don't get me wrong - turning something I don't want into money IS magical. I just want more of the money part.
I'll look into scrap yards. Any of our Chicago friends know the best place to take cars in?
I got $500 for my Aurora from a CL junk-car buyer. He came with a flat bed, paid cash
Junkyards all said $250.
I think the CrazyRay's pick-n-pull yards in the Baltimore (MD) area give $400 for "any car any condition" as long as you bring it to the yard....
Only place I know of is Victory Auto Wreckers in Bensenville. I've been there before but never sold a car to them so I have no idea what they would offer.
I gave away my Ramcharger after it caught on fire. Twice.
Always wait and see if the first fire is a fluke, that's what I say.
They gave me a tax deduction of $500 or a 2 night stay in a hotel. I chose the hotel, and then never used it and it expired. Oh well. Never shopped scrap yards, I didn't think it would make it to one and I couldn't tow it myself.
i always go to the scrap/recycling yard. they put the nicest cars in the back for a little bit for people to pick over but most goes right to the rack to get the tires/engine/trans/converter/gas tank removed, then shredded. they pay more per pound for a car than they pay for straight steel scrap. usually 10-13 cents per lb depending on the market. i got $588 for my rotted out dump truck, $500 for a caprice wagon, $300 for a ZX2. i've got a caprice sedan going in hopefully monday after work.
Most of the junk yards around me have the current scrap price posted in front of the yard and are all about the same. If the car rolls, its not filled with trash, and has a drivetrain in it they will normally come pick it up and pay the same as the scrap price if they don't have to drive too far. I do prefer my local scrap yard over the junk yard because they pay extra for aluminum wheels and batteries. Current price around here is $220.00 per ton.
Lugnut, see if Round Up is still around. They take cars.
cutter67 wrote: do you have a local scrapyard and if they have a shredder at that location they will pay the most. but you have to prep car plan on removing gas tanks and tires but strip rad, converters alternator and starters they will give higher money for those items
weird.. the local yard won't give you diddly if you take all that out. in fact, if they have to come and get it.. they do not give you a thing. If the car has all it's parts.. you get about 3 hundred
That comment is for selling to metal recyclers, not a junkyard. A junkyard parts cars out and THEN sells them to metal recyclers. Some junkyards have their own crusher-machine things and big trucks come and pick up the metal squares. Smaller junkyard will pile up all the stuff they intend to sell and when they have enough they'll call in a company that has a crusher on a semi trailer and a couple other trucks to haul it all off and they'll do this every few months. There are multiple layers of reselling that go on before that metal actually gets melted down.
Ive been paid as much as $140 for a catalytic converter and almost $40 for a big copper radiator. These prices vary constantly and that was definitely a high point in prices in my experience. Right now it only seems to be what it 'normally' is during the summer months. Its $9-10.50 / 100lb for regular 'scrap' steel-ish stuff around here right now.
I run my own scrap most of the time unless i am feeling too lazy to drop gas tanks or cut the car into pieces because it doesnt have a title. Its not uncommon to see a chunk of a car with the firewall, windshield, front frame rails and nothing else sitting in my yard next to a gas tank. If the car doesnt have a title i have to cut the back part off and take the front stuff out and scrap all that, and then call some other scrap guy off CL to come pick up the front section. Usually i either have to give that away or maybe get $20 for it. Some of the guys that run a lot of scrap and do it for a living are 'in' with the buyers so they can recycle that part, or whole cars, without a title just on their word that it's not shady. Joe Shmoe like me who only does a few cars a year and doesnt know my buyers by name, has to follow the rules and jump through some hoops.
One of our local guys has his Pick-N-Pull yards and several portable crushers. First they hit the Pick-N-Pull and after a few months they crusher shows up and they are gone to the scrap yard.
One of my local tow guys has a good side business going with the junk/abandoned car thing. He pays good money for the cars but profits as the cuts out the converter, fuel tank, battery, any aluminum, removes the wiring harness (copper) and may sell a part or two (good engine, trans). He'll pay several hundred for a complete car and double his money, while having a 'trainee' do the disassembly in his shop for a low hourly wage when they aren't busy.
I just stripped a rusted out 90 Jetta for parts. Basically just a shell with rusted out floors & rocker panels. Local junkyard offered me $175, but then, some guy driving through neighborhoods in an F350 with a trailer stopped at my house, knocked on my door and offered me $300 cash for it. I'd love to know how he's going to make money with it
I've had good luck with the guys who advertise in the paper; buy a car for a specific part for 3-500 pull what I want and call them. Usually 500 is what they pay; I've even loaded it up and taken wheels and tires off before they left. One guy said they part out on eBay and are very successful; he said they pick up ten to twelve Buicks a week to part out.
irish44j wrote: I think the CrazyRay's pick-n-pull yards in the Baltimore (MD) area give $400 for "any car any condition" as long as you bring it to the yard....
Gotta be complete. Can be super E36 M3ty, but all there. That Nissan hatch got me $380 because the batt was missing. Pretty easy, though.
Edit. berkeleying watercraft. Sink that canoe!
that might be the best placed canoe of all time
regarding Crazy Ray's I've gotten $500 for a BG chassis car with the engine (B6) and trans (F series) separated in the truck since they'd be more likely to sell since it's less wrench time. Although I suspect that they called a recycler such as Condon's and sold the motor and trans to another yard that isn't a pick and pull.
Scrap is selling tragically low right now. Place i use the most is paying $5.50/100lb. 
If you are math challenged that means a 3000 lb car is worth $150.
Quarter it with a sawzall and take it to a metal recycler yourself.
If you want some gravy separate non-ferrous.
Vigo wrote: Scrap is selling tragically low right now. Place i use the most is paying $5.50/100lb.
yes it sucks right now. i've been sitting on copper, brass, and aluminum but always take in steel when i have a whole load because it's too bulky. i have a 6x8 trailer with 4 foot tall sides overflowing with aluminum right now. my copper bin is overflowed, my brass is dumping out all over the garage floor there is so much, but i'm hoping the prices come up a bit before i take it in.
In reply to patgizz:
Might be a while, copper alloys are down 40% over the past few months. Forecast is a continued slide due to the dollar's strength and the Chinese port scandal. Upside for me is that copper theft is way down and I look like a super brain for making the prediction.
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