Cash for Junk Cars in Montana | Free Towing Statewide

How Selling Your Junk Car Works in Montana

What Is Your Montana Junk Car Worth?

Most Montana junk cars sell for $150 to $850, with complete trucks and SUVs sometimes hitting $1,200 or more. Your offer depends on vehicle weight, current scrap metal prices, condition of parts like catalytic converters and engines, and local demand. Montana’s dry climate preserves vehicles better than humid states, so less rust means higher values. Trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles bring premium prices because rural Montana communities depend on them.

Scrap steel prices set the floor for any junk vehicle. When steel markets climb, your car’s minimum value goes up too. Montana has major scrap processors in Billings, Great Falls, and Missoula that handle end-of-life vehicles. Aluminum and copper prices also affect your offer since these metals come from engines, radiators, and wiring. Check the live scrap price tracker below to see current market conditions.

Montana Junk Car Laws and Title Requirements

Last reviewed 2026-10-05 against Montana state sources. Fees and forms change; the official links below are authoritative.

Who Actually Moves a Montana Title

Montana titles are state records kept by the Motor Vehicle Division of the Department of Justice and issued by its Vehicle Services Bureau in Helena; you file at the county treasurer’s office in your county of residence, which MCA 61-3-220 lists separately from the department and its authorized agents. The same section gives two ways to pass ownership: execute the transfer in the space on the paper title and deliver it to the buyer, or authorize a county treasurer to enter the transfer on the electronic record of title. The buyer then has 40 days to apply and register, and a $10 late penalty attaches after that. Montana is not a title-holding state, so even with a lender on record the printed title goes to you, and a payoff does not clear the record by itself.

Replacing a Lost Title, and the Fee That Does Not Match

The replacement form is MV7, Certificate of Title Replacement Application, filed with the Vehicle Services Bureau at PO Box 201431 in Helena, handed across a treasurer’s counter, or submitted through MVD online services. There is a live conflict in the paperwork. The MV7 revision dated 9/26 and MVD’s own titling page both print $10.30, while MCA 61-3-204(3), rewritten by the 2025 legislature, cut that base fee to $5 as of July 1, 2026. Ask which figure the office is collecting before you write the check. Only one owner has to sign the MV7, and no part of it is notarized.

Selling When the Paper Title Is Gone

Montana leaves one door open that most states do not. MVD’s selling guidance lets you skip the wait if the vehicle was last titled in Montana, is currently registered, and the buyer is a Montana resident: hand over a signed MV7, a notarized Bill of Sale MV24 carrying every owner’s signature, and an MV1 title application naming those same buyers. The MV24 is what authorizes the electronic record transfer, and it needs a notary whenever it is used that way. Where no title record exists at all, MCA 61-3-208 controls. In every case you swear an affidavit on form MV10 covering how you acquired the vehicle, any liens you know of, and your right to a title. A vehicle 30 years or older, or worth $1,000 or less, stops there; anything newer and worth more also posts a surety bond equal to the vehicle’s value, released three years after the title issues.

Shielding, Wrecking Licenses and the County Graveyard

MCA 75-10-501 calls a vehicle a junk vehicle only when all three things are true at once: it is discarded, ruined, wrecked or dismantled; it is not validly licensed; and it stays inoperative. Once it qualifies, MCA 75-10-505 makes you shield it from public view or move it to a licensed wrecking facility or a county motor vehicle graveyard. Public view is measured from a point six feet up over the middle of a public road, and DEQ does not count a tarp as shielding. Working farms and ranches keeping small accumulations for their own repairs are exempt. Running a wrecking facility without the DEQ license is illegal; it costs $100 a year and expires every December 31.

Abandonment, Odometers and Converters

MCA 61-12-401 lets law enforcement take a vehicle into custody after 48 hours on a public highway, or after five days on a city street, other public property, or private property, and 61-12-408 fixes the penalty at a $25 to $300 fine, 5 to 90 days in jail, or both. Odometer duty under 61-3-206 exempts 2010 and earlier model years outright and 2011-and-later vehicles once they turn 20. A loose converter is capped at one sale a day by MCA 30-22-104. City rules bite sooner: Billings counts five days of open storage, while Great Falls presumes abandonment after twenty days of unfinished repair.

Cities We Buy Junk Cars in Montana

Montana work organizes around two interstates and one two-lane. I-90 carries the southwest tier through Missoula, Butte and Bozeman before it meets I-94 at Billings, the Yellowstone Valley hub for the eastern half of the state. I-15 runs north from Butte through Helena to Great Falls on the Missouri, which anchors the Golden Triangle wheat country and the approach to the Hi-Line. US 2 takes over from there, running west through Kalispell in the Flathead and east through Havre and the northern tier counties. We cover Kalispell along with Missoula, Bozeman, Helena and Butte as served areas without a page of their own.

One Montana fact shapes every offer out here. MCA 75-10-521 makes each of Montana’s 56 counties acquire and maintain a free motor vehicle graveyard, so a car with no parts value already has a legal place to land. A graveyard is not a buyer, though. What separates a scrap quote from a cash offer in Phillips, Garfield or Powder River county is the drive to the nearest licensed wrecking facility, which can be two counties off. We quote that haul into the number rather than discovering it after the truck is dispatched, which is why a ranch-road address gets a different question list than a Billings alley.

Don’t see your city? We serve all of Montana. Call 1-800-935-8652 to confirm pickup at your location.

Frequently Asked Questions — Selling a Junk Car in Montana

Billings, Missoula, Great Falls and Bozeman anchor Montana routes, and I-90 and I-15 carry most of the mileage between them. Distances are real here, so we batch rural pickups by corridor rather than making you wait on a one-off. Ranch-road access and a gate code are the two things dispatch will ask about.