What decides what a scrap car is worth

Weight, that week’s scrap market, whether it rolls, and what is missing.

Weight

A scrap car is mostly metal, and metal is bought by weight. A pickup or a full-size SUV usually brings more than a compact, whatever shape either one is in. You don’t need to know what your car weighs. Year, make and model tells us.

The market that week

We price against the scrap market as it stands when you call. It moves. The same car can get a different number in March and in September, and neither number is wrong. The number we give you is for now. If you’re ready to let the car go, let it go while the number is in front of you.

Whether it rolls

A car that rolls and steers is on the flatbed in a few minutes. One with seized brakes, four flats on bare rims, or no wheels at all takes longer and sometimes a second person. That time shows up in the number. It doesn’t rule the car out; we take cars on blocks.

What is missing

The catalytic converter is the big one. If it’s been cut off, the number drops, because the converter is a large share of what a scrap car is worth. Engine or transmission already pulled, battery gone, wheels gone: same idea. Tell us before pickup day. When the driver finds something missing that nobody mentioned, the number changes on the driveway, and that is a conversation nobody enjoys.

What doesn’t matter much

• Colour, dents, a cracked windshield.
• Mileage on a car that doesn’t run.
• How clean it is inside.
• The stereo, the tires, the floor mats.

Where it is parked

Towing is included in every number we give, so distance isn’t a separate line. What does matter is how the truck gets to the car. A field behind a barn, a car boxed in behind two others, a spot in an underground garage: say so when you call, so the driver comes with the right plan.

What to have ready when you call

• Year, make and model.
• Runs, or doesn’t.
• Anything missing or already taken off.
• Where it sits and how a truck reaches it.

One phone call covers all of it, and you get one number with the towing in it.

Written at the yard.