DON'T GET SCREWED AT THE COPART- IAA-SALVAGE AUCTION. THE STEPS I TAKE TO PREVENT LOSING MONEY

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Hey guys, welcome back to shops life.

[00:00:02]Now today's video is going to be a little different. We're not going to be in the shop fixing stuff. We are going to answer some questions and emails that I get frequently from quite a few people since I started this little YouTube channel a couple years ago. And it seems to be the same old question. Can you teach me how to buy cars from the salvage auction without getting screwed?

[00:00:22]And the answer is absolutely not.

[00:00:25]because if you're going to play this game, you're going to have to prepare to get screwed cuz it's bound to happen.

[00:00:32]Now, if you're new to the channel, my name is Travis. I've been doing rebuilders for probably well over 20 years. I've ran a shop for years. I do a lot of builders for myself. I do a lot of builders for friends. I do a lot of builders for another shop in town.

[00:00:44]That's pretty much all I do now. Over those 20 years, I mean, honestly, I think I've only gotten screwed four times that I remember. And a couple of times, well, they were self-inflicted.

[00:00:55]So, in today's video, I'm going to show you what to do to a not screw yourself, b how to help prevent getting screwed by, you know, Copart and IA, cuz you know what happens. You've heard the stories. I'm going to show you websites that I use to research the cars before I buy them. I'm going to show you everything that I do to go through and do the best job I can to make sure that when I'm bidding on a car, I'm not going to lose my money. Now, a little disclaimer before we start, okay?

[00:01:23]Everything in this video is my opinion.

[00:01:25]If you guys got different comments and stuff like that or different ideas or different theories, put them in the comments, send me an email, and uh we'll kind of go from there. What I'm going to show you is what I do and it seems to work for me. And another disclaimer, if you're thinking about getting into this business and you don't have any money and you're going to spend your last dollar to buy your first car versus pay your rent, dude, pay your rent. You need to be prepared to lose whatever money you're going to spend on a salvage car at the salvage auction. Just assume that it's going to take you months to at least recoup that money back. Now, a lot of times you buy it, you build it, you sell it, you keep it, whatever, and it works. But like I said, you need to be prepared to lose whatever money you invest in that car because it can and will happen. Years ago, I had a gentleman come to me. He wanted me to buy him a Jeep. Whatever. Click the button, push it for him. It's 15 grand.

[00:02:14]and it was a 2-y old car. It was a screaming good deal. Only had a dent in the door. Two weeks later, he walks into my shop. I never seen the car. I never looked at it. I just clicked the button, bought it. He paid me. He went and got the car. He walks in. I said, "How's the car?" He says, "Junk. Absolute junk."

[00:02:29]So, I asked him for the VIN number. And I did my research the way I would have done the research and what I'm going to show you today. And here I find out that that car was at the auction last year on its roof, completely destroyed. And somebody completely mopped the car out.

[00:02:42]You know what he did with that $15,000?

[00:02:44]He ate it. He ended up parting that car out and I'm sure he lost 10 grand.

[00:02:48]That's not the only story I've heard or witnessed or been a part of. So, I'm going to show you what I do, how I do it, and hopefully everybody here going to learn a little something and save themselves a headache. All right. So, I'm up here at my computer. Got my insurance auto auctions pulled up and my Copart pulled up. And I'm going to go through, let's start with the basics.

[00:03:05]I'm going to show you how to not screw yourself, things that you're responsible for. After that, we'll talk about how to not get screwed by these guys. And we're going to talk about some other things like looking out for things, what I call the rerun and the flip or what I like to call the fluff. I'm going to show you kind of how to spot them and how to research these things to make sure that what you get is what you're paying for.

[00:03:31]All right. So, I'm not going to do any fancy editing or anything like that. So, we're just going to go through this and I'm going to show you what I know. I'm a Nissan real guy. I do a lot of neats on rogue. So that's what we're going to use here today. And the first thing you need to know is your state rules. Okay. Now I'm in Wisconsin, but I'm on the Wisconsin Iowa border. For the most part, my house is in Wisconsin. 15 minutes is Iowa. I do all my business in Iowa. Okay. So I need to know everybody's rules for this area, which is Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Now, Iowa is a public auction state, which means if you live in Iowa, you can open up a Copart or IIA account and you can buy a wreck car at the salvage auction in the state of Iowa. You can fix it, you can get it inspected, you can get it titled, and you can drive the car. It's very simple. Iowa is probably one of the most lenient states there is, but they also total cars a lot. Wisconsin, you need a license. Illinois, you need a license. Michigan, you need a lot of licenses. We don't deal with Michigan.

[00:04:29]So, like I said, I'm an eye, Wisconsin.

[00:04:31]So, let's just pull up this 2017 this Yeah, 2017 Nissan Rogue. First thing you need to look at, you need to research the car. Okay, first thing we're going to look at is the title. Look right here. Junk bill of sale. That car is not titable. Okay, you can't you can't do none of that. That's a junkyard car. So, we don't want that one unless you're looking for a parts car. So, let's pull this 18 here in Wisconsin and look at everything on this. Okay, this is a collision. You see the damage?

[00:04:59]Pretty straightforward. Look at the title. That's a clear title. Wisconsin with transmission damage. Now, this a Nissan Rogue. You don't buy that car, okay? This thing's junk. But this is my point. This is a clear title Wisconsin.

[00:05:11]So, if you live in Wisconsin, you can buy this car if you're a dealer, right?

[00:05:15]You can fix it. You don't even have to have it inspected because it's clear title. All you do fix it and sell it.

[00:05:22]The next owner doesn't know the difference unless you're on a Carfax.

[00:05:25]We'll talk about that a little later, too. But because all the vehicles that we're buying are coming into Iowa, Iowa has different rules. Okay? So, this is clear title Wisconsin. If this comes into Iowa into a dealership, when we go down to title this car, they're going to see that it was damaged and it came from an insurance sale and they're going to want to know why. And chances are, nine times out of 10, Iowa will total this car when it comes into the state of Iowa. So, those are things you need to know. If you're in Wisconsin, this thing stays clear title.

[00:05:56]come to Iowa, it's going to go salvage.

[00:05:58]So, if you pay full retail price for a clean tile car in Wisconsin and it goes salvage coming into Iowa, well, you're gonna lose some money. Now, the other one we deal with because we're so close to the border here. Now, Illinois only 10 minutes from me. Okay? I can be in all three states within 10 minutes.

[00:06:12]Illinois has different rules. Okay? So, this is an Iowa. If I bring this car into Iowa, bought it in Illinois, it goes salvaged in Iowa because it's already salvaged in Illinois. We repair it. We get inspected. We sell it. No big deal. Unless it gets sold back into Illinois because this came out of Illinois as salvage and now it's going to go back into Illinois because that's who we sold it to. Now they have to have it reinspected in the state of Illinois because Illinois wants their money, too.

[00:06:40]You know what I'm saying? So, if it comes out of Illinois and goes back into Illinois, that person's going to pay another inspection fee. If it comes out of Illinois and gets sold to Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, no big deal. Just keep that in mind. So, at the end of the day, you need to know what title it is.

[00:06:56]If it's anything that you can use depending on what state you live in, you got to know your own state rules. I can't tell you that. So, don't message me and ask me because I don't know. I know Iowa and Wisconsin. Iowa has their own inspection. It's a theft inspection.

[00:07:08]Okay? The car has to be repaired. The damage has to be repaired. And you have to show receipts of where the parts came from. But that's all they do. They walk around. and I look at it. Hey, yeah, it's fixed. Here you go. Wisconsin, different story. Wisconsin goes through and gets a full vehicle inspection from my understanding. I've never dealt with it, but I have talked to people who have and dealers over here that do, and it goes through a complete inspection, like up on the hoist, they go through everything. And if, let's say, you bought this car here with a front end collision, rebuilt title, you took it in to get inspected, and the sunroof doesn't work, it won't pass inspection.

[00:07:43]That's my understanding in Wisconsin.

[00:07:45]Illinois, same thing. They You got to jump through more hoops over there. And I know other states are worse, but Iowa is actually the easiest. So, we're gonna stick with that. So, now we're gonna look at We know our title's good. Okay, this car isn't good, but the title's good. Clear. And then I look at other things. Okay, we got to look at our mileage.

[00:08:04]Okay, so it's got 85,000 miles. And you can see right here it says actual. The other thing I'm going to look at is if it's frontwheel drive or all-wheel drive. We live in the Midwest. I never buy a front-wheel drive Nissan Rogue. I never buy a two- wheelel drive pickup truck. But if you're looking at F-150s down in Texas, chances are a lot of them are two wheel drive. Now, if you don't pay attention to that and you pay 4x4 price for a two- wheelel drive truck in Texas, have it shipped up here and find out it's two wheel drive, um, yeah, have good luck selling that one. So, again, this 2020 here now, this interests me, okay? Because look at the mileage.

[00:08:39]35,000 miles, that's a good deal.

[00:08:41]all-wheel drive. That's easy sell. Now, I wouldn't buy this because that side collision, but again, you look up here, we got a junk bill of sale. That car is no good to us. Okay? So, let's stay away from that stuff. Now, we're going to talk about some other stuff. And one of the emails that I got was from a gentleman. His name was Matthew, and he sent me this link to this truck, and he is asking me how to find out if this is a good deal or not. Right? So, I told him exactly what I'm going to tell all you guys today. So, here we go. This is a 2023 F-150 Super Crew, and it's on a New York salvage certificate. Okay. Now, I don't deal New York. I know there's a lot of goofy stuff over there, but look at the truck. Good looking truck, right?

[00:09:28]Look at our damages. We got primary damage is minor dent and scratches.

[00:09:31]Secondary damage is normal wear.

[00:09:33]Estimated retail value $41,000.

[00:09:36]Um, yeah. to run and drive automatic 4x4.

[00:09:45]Looks like a pretty decent buy, right?

[00:09:47]Okay, first thing I'm going to tell you to do. This is the easiest thing that anybody can do up here is the vin, right? And Copart and I, they always chop out those last couple digits because they think they're smart. You just go down here to the They always have a picture of the VIN. Zoom in on it. You know, you can pull the rest of the bin, right? Okay. So now what do we do with that bin? The easiest thing you can do ever. Put it into your Googler. I mean it's not complicated, right? Copy and paste. Boom. Well, what do we have here? Go over and select our images.

[00:10:20]Okay, there's the truck, right? Same picture. Same wheels. Well, let's look at the one next to it right here. See that one? It's over here on the big side. It doesn't look like the same truck. I mean, bags are blown, front end's crashed, wheels, tires are different. You know, look at this picture to that picture. Completely different truck.

[00:10:41]But if you look down here, it's got same VIN number, 77916, and we're googling 77916.

[00:10:48]Okay. Pretty interesting, huh? Well, I gave them that information, and I told them the next step that I do. Okay. And this is a website that I am not sponsored by this by any means, and I hope they leave this free for the rest of everybody's life. If they do, great.

[00:11:02]If not, I don't know, tell you. It's well worth paying for this site. Okay, we're gonna bring it up right here.

[00:11:09]Look what we have here.

[00:11:12]There's our truck from Copart, right?

[00:11:16]Look at the mileage. 15920 and it's in California. All right. Well, look up here. Here's that same truck.

[00:11:25]Mileage is 15,840.

[00:11:27]Okay. So, Sunny put what? 60 miles on it. 80 miles on it and now it's in Albany. It came It started in Albany, New York at the insurance auto auctions.

[00:11:37]Sold by an insurance company. And that's the other thing I'm going to tell you. I don't buy things that aren't wrecked.

[00:11:43]Okay? You ever heard the saying too good to be true? It was written about the salvage auction. Okay? If you see a car that's a run and drive, normal wear and tear, believe you guys, it's at the auction for a reason. All right? Now, I've gotten emails from people before saying, "Oh, I bought a 20-y old car with 400,000 miles on it from IA and the motor was junk." No way. You're kidding me. If the dealer can't sell it, then it's going to go to the auction. If it needs to go to the auction, why can't the dealer sell it? You know what's wrong with this car? And this is the prime example right here. Started life in New York, got bought at IIA, shipped all the way over to California, fixed.

[00:12:26]Now, the damage is disclosed on that, right? But look at here. It's being sold on a New York salvage certificate in California, right? And it did sell, right? There's the final bid. $21,700.

[00:12:38]So, hopefully somebody got a nice truck.

[00:12:40]But if you look at that, I don't know.

[00:12:42]Actually, that's not bad for an F-150.

[00:12:43]But, you know, they did a good job.

[00:12:47]But why couldn't they sell this truck?

[00:12:49]Why couldn't you get this truck inspected in California?

[00:12:53]Why did why did it stay with a New York salvage certificate? Those are the things you need to ask yourself. You need just assume that everybody's out to screw you at the salvage auction. Okay, it's just the easiest way to nicest way to put it. All right, so let's jump off that one. So, yeah, this kid, he sent me this. I found this information to him.

[00:13:11]Actually, I showed him what what I just showed you guys. He went and found the information by himself and he figured the rest of it out by himself. And I'm assuming he's not the one that owns this truck because I basically told him, "You will not be the one owning this truck."

[00:13:23]But it is what it is. So, let's jump over this one. Now, we're going to talk about this other one. Okay? We're going to talk about what we call the rerun.

[00:13:30]Um, there's not a lot of good examples in here, but what a rerun car is is when somebody buys it at the auction. And this one coming up next might be a rerun, but I also call the fluff. Could go either way. All right. So the rerun is when somebody buys something at the auction, you know, ships it to California or whatever, gets it to their shop and goes, "Holy crap, this thing's freaking junk." You know, so run it back through the auction and just dump it. Well, the problem is they paid, let's say, 10 grand for it, and now they had fees. So now they got 115 in it. So they need to get $11,500 out of this car to try to get their money back without losing too much, right?

[00:14:12]Well, that can be tough to do. So, let's look at this next car. Again, Copart.

[00:14:16]You're going to see a lot of these cars on Copart. Okay. I A it seems like they take the cars from insurance auto auction and rerun them or fluff them, flip them on Copart. I have a theory behind that, but we'll get into that in a minute if I remember. Anyways, these cars are easy to find, okay? You're not really going to find a rerun on a lightly wrecked Nissan Rogue.

[00:14:40]There's just not no money in it. You know what I'm saying? It's always the higherend stuff like this 2025 BMW X5 drive 40i40i.

[00:14:49]I don't I'm not a BMW guy. Look at this retail value. $63,000.

[00:14:54]Right. Here's a buy it now. $43,000.

[00:14:58]Now, it doesn't say who the seller is.

[00:15:00]I'll tell you right now, it's not insurance company. So, the current bid on this is uh 138 right now. It's got 16 hours to go. Rolling through the pictures. Doesn't look that bad, you know. I mean, I'm not a BMW guy, but doesn't look like a lot of damage there.

[00:15:14]Zoom in. You know, everything kind of looks okay, right? Front end picture.

[00:15:18]Not bad. Let's go to the interior here.

[00:15:21]Blowing wheelbag ain't terrible, right?

[00:15:25]Well, here's your full VIN. Copy that.

[00:15:28]Paste it in your Googler. Pull up your images. Oh, what do we have here? Look at that bad boy. Same VIN number, 3505, right?

[00:15:37]You can see right there. Is that the front bumper? Is that the curtain airbag? What is that? I don't know. So, yeah, there's that same BMW. So, now we're going to go back to this website that I told you about. This is called Stat One VIN. And I use this all the time, and it'll tell you what people paid for the car, when it sold, how many times it sold. All right. And you can do other things with this this this website, too. You can do like Carfaxes, not the car facts, but the car reports from them. And they're only like six bucks and I use them all the time. Six bucks is pretty cheap to save yourself what $39,000. Okay, so here we go.

[00:16:16]So here it is at Copart down in Georgia.

[00:16:18]All right, that's where we just showed you the car at at the auction and uh buy it now. $39,000.

[00:16:24]Here's your mileage, 23,486.

[00:16:28]And it's a dealer, non insurance. So that was What's the date on this one?

[00:16:32]Friday. So May 29th, April 9th.

[00:16:39]Okay, this is Wow, they they flipped this thing quick.

[00:16:44]So April 9th, this thing sold for $26,250.

[00:16:47]And look at that. That that looks a little worse than what the first pictures look like on the other site, didn't it? So this is what I'm going to call a rerun. They bought the car. They paid a lot of money for it, and it's worse than they thought. or they're doing what we call the fluff. Okay? I mean, look at that hood. That hood's trashed, right? But if you go back and look at the auction hood, nothing wrong with it. I mean, they actually went through the trouble to put a different hood on the car and obviously clean it up. Took all the broken stuff out of it. Probably bent a few things to make it look a little better. cleaned it up, washed it, cleaned out the interior because we know that there was something right here, whether it been the front bumper or a blown airbag. You don't have the seat bags blown or if the curtain airbags blown, and they just cut it and tucked it up in there so it looks better. But this is what I would call a fluff. And now they're trying to sell that car for $43,000.

[00:17:45]So look at the numbers around here. So yeah, this thing sold for 26250 plus they had their fees. So, let's just say they got uh went from Chicago to Georgia. So, let's say transport and everything else, they got 29 grand in that car, right?

[00:18:02]And now they went down here, they probably got a used hood from the junkyard, uh beat a few things around, cleaned it up, washed it, obviously made it look better, and now it's back at the auction as a dealer in Georgia, and they're trying to get $39,000. So, I mean, easy numbers. They're trying to make 10 grand on this car and not actually fix it. Okay, that's the fluff.

[00:18:26]That's the flip. That's what they're doing. And these are easy to find. And I'll kind of tell you how we got there.

[00:18:31]Let's pull this one up. This one here is pretty cool. 23 BMW. Again, these are usually high-end cars that they do this to. Something that's got some margin.

[00:18:39]They buy it dirt cheap, but it's worth $60,000, right? This one here, I'll tell you exactly how I found this car real quick here. But let's just look at it first. Okay. Little damage on the hood there. Uh does have some damage on the door here. Pretty simple. Doesn't look too terrible at all. Right. Wheels look good. Uh blown knee bag, blown curtain bag. Not a big deal. I'm not a BMW guy, but yeah. Front end. Yeah. The one thing that did catch my eye is this right here. See the uh light right through all the grills? There's There's a bunch of stuff missing underneath there. You know what I'm saying? So, it's like, well, that don't look right. So, again, copy and paste the VIN, throw it in the Googler. What comes up? Look at that.

[00:19:29]Now, that looks a little worse than it did at the auction right now, right?

[00:19:32]Yeah, I know. Here's your VIN. $1699.

[00:19:36]There's the VIN. $1699.

[00:19:38]So, what's the story on this one? I mean, this is a 2023. I don't think this car has a lot of value to it. So, what's happening here? And this what I believe is the rerun. Okay, they bought this car thinking they were going to fix it and it's way worse than they thought. So, they're not even trying to make money on the deal. They're just trying to get their money back. Okay, so one stat VIN stat one vin whichever way it is. It's uh let me look here. Make sure I'm stat. Vin is the website. Okay.

[00:20:09]And I use this all the time and it's free. I'm not sponsoring any of that crap. This is just stuff I'm information I'm telling you guys to re This is with the research that I do before I buy or bid on cars.

[00:20:19]All right. So, here's our car. It's out in Los Angeles and this one didn't leave the state. Came from California. Started out at Copart and it's being resold at Copart again. So, that's why I say usually if it's a if it's a fluff, usually comes from IIA and goes to Copart. And the reason they do that is because it's hard to research IIA cars after they're sold, like Copart. So, we're just going to open up a new Copart window here. We're going to go back to that F-150.

[00:20:50]This is on Copart. The sale has ended, right? There's our lot number. So, we're just going to copy and paste this lot number. And you can do this with any car off Copart within a time frame. So, if you just go back to Copart, copy and paste that lot number in there, search inventory, there's that truck. Okay, it's that easy. Now, if if this was sold by Insurance Auto auction, and I think we can do that. Actually, I'm not I'm just going to tell you if you copy and paste a lot number into insurance auto auctions and IAA lot number into the IAA website, it doesn't do nothing. Once that car is sold, it is erased off Insurance Auto Auctions records. There is nothing you can find in there.

[00:21:33]Copart, you can put the lot number in there and you go back and find that vehicle for years. So, I think they buy them at IIA because the idiots in the world can't research it that easily and then they take it to Copart. So, the two aren't jing. You know what I'm saying?

[00:21:50]So, we jump back to this guy here.

[00:21:54]Like I said, this is what the what I'm going to call the rerun. Now, this car sold in California Sun Valley. Uh, no mileage is unknown on it. Sold for $7,000, right? And now it's back at the auction and the reseller reserve is 105. All right. So, they paid seven grand for this car with fees. They got well over eight grand in this car with fees. Okay.

[00:22:17]Then they had transport. So, let's say you got 8,500 bucks in it. And obviously, you got some time beating around the sheet metal and making it look good. So, let's try to make a couple bucks on it while we're there.

[00:22:27]might as well. Right. This is what caught my eye. All right. The seller reserve is at 105.

[00:22:33]The current bid is at $9,900.

[00:22:38]Now, if you were actually bidding on this car and you wanted to buy it and that was that that close to reserve, what 600 bucks from the reserve, most likely you're not going to wait till it hits the auction because you're not going to get it. It's going to go over the reserve unless somebody's pre- bidding it up for them. his buddy, whatever, somebody else who has a Copart account is over there because he knows the reserves of 105. So this guy's over here going and every time you bid it, he's going to bid $100 more. Nobody's going to go over 105, they're trying to get you to go over 105 so they can sell it. Somebody's bidding this car up and that's what they do. they get it close to the reserve because in my opinion if this was a Nissan Rogue, right, and I wanted this car and the reserve was 105 and it was at $9,900 already and it doesn't go to the auction till tomorrow, it's going to go over the reserve. So, I'm just going to click the button now. I mean, what's another 600 bucks when you're spending 10 grand, right? Well, that's what this guy's doing. He's trying to get the price up. He's setting the hook. All right. Here's the bait and he wants to set it and he's got his buddy doing it because he can't bid bid against his own car. I don't think you can. I know somebody can answer that if they've done it, but I've never tried it. So, yeah, this is what caught my eye right here.

[00:23:56]Reserves a 105. The bid's already at 9900. They're trying to catch you. All right, so those are some of the things that you can do to research the car. And don't be afraid to run a Carfax. If you are looking at a specific vehicle, spend the $6 on stat one VIN and run a history report on it. It's going to tell you if it's at the auction. You know, it's going to tell you as much information as you can get. You need to know as much as you can. And are you still going to get screwed? Very well could be. So, now let's talk about the non auction companies. Okay? So, now there's companies out there that you just go and they have a lot full of these cars and you can just pick pick one and buy it.

[00:24:32]They tell you how much they want for it.

[00:24:34]Okay. Now, I know there's one out in California. I don't know the name of it.

[00:24:38]They screwed a friend of mine out of a freaking ton of money and that was all they had all in writing. Everything was signed before that car was shipped. They had their butt covered 110%. And he ate that truck for like well over 20 grand.

[00:24:53]This was a few years ago, but um I didn't have a lot to do with it, but I was in on the deal. I was looking at the pictures. Everything looked fine to me.

[00:25:02]But yeah, they went through and fluffed that thing like you wouldn't believe.

[00:25:06]And the truck, it was a Toyota Land Cruiser, I think, and it was completely junk. And he lost a lot of money. I've never heard anything good about that company. Okay, I don't know what the name of it is. They're out in California somewhere. Again, you can go to the auctions and you can look at these cars, but it's it's not that easy. I mean, you need to be a member. It's a lot of they don't want you there. Okay, so now let's talk about this company is down in Missouri and I've never heard anything bad about them. Okay, I'm just going to say that um the reviews seem to be good on them and this is what they do. I'm not going to really if it comes up, you can probably see it up there in the top or whatever, but um we're just going to show you the same thing. Look at this nice little Bronco here. Okay, they sell Savage vehicles. It sells right here.

[00:25:51]It's a salvage vehicle. Um it's got 13,000 m on it. Looks like a beautiful little Bronco. And I found this one, not this particular vehicle, but a friend of mine, wants to build a Bronco. And he was looking at this website. He's like, "What do you think of this one? What do you think of that one?" And I said, "Well, why don't you Google the VIN and then go to Stat One VIN and find out what they paid for it and do all your research first. Let me show you what we found." Okay, we're going to use this truck as an example. So, yeah. What?

[00:26:20]Crashing left front fender. Can we zoom in? Not really. Their pictures aren't there great, but yeah, you can just see light damage around the fender. Front end looks a little banged up, right?

[00:26:31]Wheels and everything look good. Okay, right there is the VIN, guys. All you got to do is copy and paste it into Google, pull up the picture. Oh, look at that. Huh? That don't look so pretty no more now, does it?

[00:26:44]Yeah, there's the VIN. I mean, you know, that's the same truck. And you can do this to all their vehicles. You They have the VIN right on the website. I don't really think they're hiding anything. Like I said, I'm not saying anything bad about these guys at all. I have no proof that they're screwing people, but I'm just saying, wouldn't you like to know?

[00:27:02]Can we pull this picture up? Yeah. I mean, that looks a little worse than that.

[00:27:10]I thought I ran the stat. Oh, no. Uh, stat one vin open up. Let me do this quick. So, stat. Vin.

[00:27:18]Okay. Yeah, I tried to pull this up before and it didn't come up.

[00:27:22]So, we're going to go over here to this website. We're just going to grab that VIN, copy it, jump up here, and you got to place. Now, you don't do it down here, okay? You got to do it up here in this upper box. Copy and paste in there. And sometimes it doesn't work. Going to ask if I'm a robot. I don't think I am.

[00:27:41]Sometimes I wish I was. All right.

[00:27:44]Here's our truck. Came from Insurance Auto Auctions. Final bid 15,900. It did not sell and then it finally sold on uh May 5th for $18. Now figure your fees.

[00:27:57]So, you know, well over 20 grand with the fees. Fees are stupid on these things. And then shipping. Where was this one at? Came from insurance auto auctions. Came from Ohio. Okay. So, these guys are in Missouri. So, it wasn't a big travel, but let's just say 20. Let's say they got $21,000 on this thing shipped. Okay. Nice easy number.

[00:28:16]So, we jump back to their website.

[00:28:20]They're asking $28,000 for it. So, that's not a huge profit, but they obviously put a lot of work into this thing prior. Right now, question is, is that, was it just cosmetic, or are you going to buy this and find out that the frame's freaking junk or diamond? I mean, that's a pretty good hit in the left front.

[00:28:40]Sorry, UPS is here if you hear something out there dropping off a shipment that was supposed to be like seven hours ago.

[00:28:47]It's a pretty truck.

[00:28:50]Here we go. I get a better picture of it now. Yeah, that don't look bad, does it?

[00:28:53]Looks like it needs a headlight, hood, fender, and you can do this all day.

[00:29:01]Literally all day. All you got to do is search and do your math. I mean, those are the basics of going through the auction. You need to check all your information. You know, what the title status is, four-wheel drive, all-wheel drive. Make sure it's everything that you want. make sure the mileage is correct. Those are the steps that I go through to make sure that I don't screw myself and they're not going to screw me. Is it foolproof? No. And you're still going to take a chance, especially when you're dealing with high-end vehicles like BMWs and Lincoln and stuff. There is a business, like I said, of buying them, flipping them, and running them back to the auction. And it's a good business. There's money to be made. There's people to be screwed, especially if it gets shipped overseas.

[00:29:41]But anyways guys, that's about the most information I can give you on how to properly buy a car from the salvage auction. I hope it helps. If you guys have any tricks that I missed or you think work better, either send me a comment or send me an email at [email protected].

[00:29:57]Um, we always like to learn things. You know what I'm saying? And if we can share that information with other people and help save people from getting screwed by these guys who are literally screwing people on Copart and IIA. But anyways guys, that's it. That's all I got to say. Um, hope this helps somebody. If it does, let me know in the comments. Like I said, if you got another idea, let me know in the comments. But we'll uh talk to you next week. I got to get back out to the shop and get some stuff going out there. But thanks for watching, guys. Appreciate it. Catch you on the next one.