junk yards, salvage yard confused

we have been scrapping cars for a while now as most of you know, we have had a few pretty nice cars we hate to take to the scrap yard. we have had a really nice 97 sebring, a couple of nice camrys, our cadillac catera, chevy 1500, dodge 250 86, all of these have had super nice bodies and interiors. blown motors usually. we have called the local junkyards on all these occasions, we dont even make it to a price they dont even want to look at them and tell us we are better off to just take it across the scales. its fine we still make our money and probably a little more and we enjoy working on the cars its just kinda sad to run our concrete saw thru a perfectly good grill to snatch the goodies, then flip it on its side to get the cat. we take these cars to the yard and the crane operator just shakess his head and smiles, he says where do you guys get all these cars and we say people sell them tous. its just me and my partner and as the rest of you we spend the majority of our time in the truck and really don't have time or the desire to part out vehicles for parts someone may or may not come and buy someday i know we will make more money doing so but if we sat on our cars waiting for parts to sell we would probably be on car 10 instead of 35. we have tried selling sets of alum wheels with tires on craigslist for 100bucks and get no calls or someone wanting to trade a chicken or some crap for them, when they can scrap for 50 to 70 and we sell the tires to a local used car dealer for 5 apiece its just easier to scrap it than deal with the hassle. as of right now we need to flip ours relativly fast and cant have our money tied up, we need the cash to buy more tools and the next car. i say all this to get to my question finally, why wouldnt a junkyard in the business of selling parts not want to purchase clean desireable vehicle with just a blown motor with all the other parts still there??? like i said we never even make it to price but we woulda took less than 500 for any of them. all thoughts and feedback welcome thanks in advance cory

What year cars are you getting?I used to work at a junkyard and most of them only like to stock cars that are not more than 5 or 6 years old. Anything older is usually written off as totaled.

these are all late 90s and the cadillac was an 01 , the dodge truck was a 86

Cash for clunkers

that reminds me :) our tag line on the adds we run in the papers is CLUNKERS AND JUNKERS you guys can use it if you want :)

I was at our local junkyard back this summer getting a part and a guy from our town came in with a smaller car (drove it in by the way) and told them he needed cash. They gave him $200. for a plated running automobile. Probably happens all the time. If their buying runners like that, they don't need yours,,,

Most junkyards want later model cars. Most insurance companies won't recommend full coverage on a vehicle more than 10 years old. When your car goes to a body shop for an insurance claim, chances are, most of the parts will come from the junkyard. U-pull-it yards that cater to the do it yourselfers and weekend mechanics, are still buying older models.

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Originally Posted by c4f5

Most junkyards want later model cars. Most insurance companies won't recommend full coverage on a vehicle more than 10 years old. When your car goes to a body shop for an insurance claim, chances are, most of the parts will come from the junkyard. U-pull-it yards that cater to the do it yourselfers and weekend mechanics, are still buying older models.

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Most states have laws requiring the body shop to notify you if they're using used parts, or not allowing them to use scrap parts all together.

And the best thing to do if trying to sell cars to the junk yards is go in and talk to them and find out what they're looking for. And when you're talking find out who to specifically ask for when offering one of your cars. If you just call as johnny off the street you're going to get treated like johnny off the street, and they're not going to want to do business with you.

the local you pull it yard near me buys any complete car for 300 and any truck for 500. they also buy scrap at .10 lb so i guess if had a truck that was more then or close to 5,000 you could cut the radiator out and tow it accross there scale

The cars that come over my scales are 95& pure crap.

we have had at least 10 that are at least okay to pretty nice, and several that actually drove up on the trailer most of those werenot very nice tho, got one today but thats a whole different thread :)

Do you do ebay? You might try searching completed auctions for the model and year of each vehicle you get in, to see what's in demand. Its surprising what odd stuff is hot - fuel injectors, climate control parts, dash clusters...there could be an extra couple hundred in each car :)

i used to, and really need to now years ago i sold some center caps to my old 92 dakota on there for like 20 bucks or so, we scrapped a nissan truck last week or the week before and this week on cl someone is wanting one for parts lol only me