Articles

Should You Scrap or Donate Your Car

by Karen Campese CEO of Cars4Charities

People are keeping their vehicles a lot longer nowadays because of the recession. In addition, many people have postponed the routine maintenance on their vehicle because they simply do not have the money or are not aware of the warning signs of trouble. Cars that do not have proper maintenance often develop serious problems that require very expensive repairs. Often those repairs cost more than the car is worth.

So what do you do with your car when that is the case? You have four choices; sell it, part it out, scrap it or donate car. Selling a car with a serious problem is very difficult. Most people only want to purchase a car they can drive without having to make any expensive repairs. Anyone who is interested in buying it is likely to offer you very little money for it. Selling a car is also very time consuming, inconvenient, unsafe and frustrating.

Another choice is to sell the parts off your used car yourself. To do that, you have to be knowledgeable about auto parts, their value and how to remove them. All the fluids will need to be drained from the vehicle and properly recycled. Since, you will not be able to sell the defective parts you will need to decide how to dispose of them along with the parts that do not sell. Many localities have ordinances against people having unlicensed vehicles on their property. If your community has one, parting out your car is not an option for dealing with your used car.

A third choice is to scrap your car. That means selling it to a junk yard that will sell the worthwhile parts and crush the rest and sell the scrap metal. The amount of money you will get at a scrap yard depends on the price of scrap metal in your area, the weight of your car and whether you can drive the car to the yard. The price of scrap metal varies throughout the country. In general it is between $100 and $200 per ton, making the salvage amount for the average car between $250 and $400. You will only get half that amount if the scrap yard has the send a tow truck to pick it up

Your forth option is to donate your car to charity. Instead of cash, you will get a very nice tax deduction. Most charities will accept a vehicle that does not run or has major problems. They will also pickup your car donation for free. The charity will sell your car for the most money possible, whether that is to a used car dealer or a scrap yard. Since charities can provide both places a higher volume of vehicles, they receive a higher price for a car than a private person can. That money is used by the charity to support with their cause.

Out of all the choices for getting rid of a used car with serious problems, selling it privately and selling the parts from it are not practical. Selling it to a scrap yard will get you a small amount of money. You will get a tax deduction for more than that and help support a good cause if you donate car, truck, suv, or van to charity. That makes car donation to charity the best of all the choices.


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About Karen Campese Freshman   CEO of Cars4Charities

15 connections, 0 recommendations, 35 honor points.
Joined APSense since, August 3rd, 2010, From Utica, United States.

Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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