Visit a car dealership. There’s a window sticker with the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price, or MSRP, printed right on it. Look online and you’ll see the exact same price on the carmaker’s website. Used cars too – you’ll find relatively consistent pricing for used cars thanks to websites like Kelley Blue Book and NADA Guides.
But if your car is what you’d call junk, it’s a different thing altogether. When you’re trying to offload it, how do you decide how much to accept from the junkyard?
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How Junk Yards Price Vehicles
The question is, “how do junkyards price cars?” Assigning a value to a vehicle isn’t so simple when it’s no longer in a resalable condition. Let’s face it. You aren’t going to be putting a ‘FOR SALE’ sign on the window at the end of your driveway. Even trying to trade it in on a new car gets you heckled off the lot.
Since your car is only good enough for the junkyard, what you need to know is how they assess the prices for junk cars that come in.
Priced by Weight
The fact is that junkyards make their money by recycling the metal from junk cars. To them, the only thing good about taking in scrap vehicles is the heavy engines, transmissions, frames, wheels, and other metal items.
Whether at the junkyard or at the next stage in the process, the metals are separated and melted down to create new products. They might even be used to make your next vehicle. Essentially, junk cars are raw material alone.
Because the bulk of a car is made up of metal, junkyards pay for vehicles by weight. It’s all based on scrap metal prices per ton.
How Do Scrap Metal Prices Factor In?
If you ask at the junkyard for scrap metal prices on steel and aluminum, you’ll get drastically different results. Clean steel could be $220 per ton or more while aluminum is around $1000 per ton. But scrap cars aren’t clean – they’re painted, they have foam glued to them, and the average person has no way to separate it all apart.
It also accounts for the junkyard disposing of all the other junk that’s in your car. The tires need to be recycled and the foam and upholstery need to be discarded. Plastic needs to be separated out for the garbage heap or recycling, but it’s not worth much to the junkyard.
Junk Car Prices Per Ton 2019
Metal recycling prices fluctuate not just annually but weekly and even daily. What it’s worth today isn’t necessarily the same as you’ll get tomorrow. Historically, junk car prices fluctuate based on supply and demand.
For scrap cars, the price per ton is much less than you’d hope for – around $310 to $340 per ton. That’s down from years ago when scrap steel prices were much higher, and that’s also not what you’ll get paid!
That price is what the junkyard gets when they sell the shredded steel off. There’s a lot of work, time, and resources that go into it after you drop your car off at the junkyard. They have the machinery to maintain and repair, staff to pay, property tax bills, and they need to make a profit too.
If you do a good job researching your local junkyards, you might get around half of the shredded scrap steel prices that are listed. That means you’d get around $180 to $300 altogether for a vehicle that you sell to a junkyard.
Not Worth the Trouble?
You might be thinking it’s not worth the time and effort to sell your car to the junkyard. If that’s what you’re thinking, then we can help.
We’ll buy your junk car from you instead. Simply request a quote for your car in its current condition. No need to fix it up or clean it up. We’ll take it as is.
We’ll make you a no-obligation offer for your car in as-is condition. If the offer looks good to you, all you need to do is accept it. We’ll pay you fast for your car, usually within 24 to 48 hours. We’ll even pick it up from where it sits at no charge to you. You can do it all from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy chair at home!
Did You Know?
