Sell a Junk Car in Burlington, VT — Free Towing, Paid at Pickup

A dead car in Burlington sits on a five-day clock. Chapter 20, Article VI of the city ordinances gives anyone in charge of a property, whether owner, tenant, occupant or lessee, five days before a partially dismantled, nonoperating, wrecked, junked or unregistered vehicle becomes a violation. We buy those cars and we come to them. Call 1-800-935-8652 with the year, make, model and whether it still rolls and steers, and you will have a real number on that call. There is no lot to drive to and no counter to wait at. A truck is dispatched, the driver pays cash at pickup, and the tow costs you nothing. Burlington pickups are not all alike. A shared drive off North Street, a Hill Section grade above Main, a New North End cul-de-sac near Appletree Point: say which one you have and we send the right truck.

Call 1-800-935-8652 for a free offer on your vehicle in Burlington. Free towing, cash on pickup.

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How to sell a junk car in Burlington

Start with the phone. We need the year, make and model, whether the car rolls and steers, whether the converter and wheels are still on it, and the address with a sentence about how a flatbed reaches the car. You get a firm number on that call, we book a window, and the driver hands you cash when the car goes up on the deck. Access is the real variable here. Section 20-43 keeps trucks over 20,000 pounds off anything but designated routes, with a service exemption that only holds if the truck comes in and leaves by the most direct way, so Pine Street, Shelburne Street, Riverside Avenue, North Avenue and Battery Street carry most of our traffic. Some blocks are closed to heavy trucks outright: Prospect Parkway, Birchcliff Parkway, Hayward Street from Howard to Locust Terrace, Locust Terrace, University Place, and Grove Street above 24,000 pounds. Around UVM, the all-hours residential permit zones on Colchester Avenue, East Avenue, Summit Street and North Prospect Street make an unpermitted curbside stage a $75 ticket. Old North End blocks with no setback are tightest; say so and we send a smaller rig.

What is a junk car worth in Burlington?

Price is mostly weight, with the catalytic converter and any resellable drivetrain on top. A full-size pickup or body-on-frame SUV with the converter still attached sits near the top of a typical $150 to $700 range, and a stripped four-cylinder with the converter already cut off sits near the bottom. Two local facts move the number. The first is salt. VTrans logs salt and sand use weekly starting the first week of November and running twenty-six weeks, usually into the last week of April, and the Lake Champlain Basin Program reports chloride loading rising in nearly every basin river. That is why so many cars here die at inspection instead of at the engine. The 2026 Vermont Periodic Inspection Manual rejects a vehicle when corrosion passes through an inner or outer rocker panel or a frame cross member, and accepts no patches or welds there. A good drivetrain under a rotten rocker is still worth real money to us. The second is distance. Vermont’s environmental registry lists eight permitted salvage yards in Chittenden County, and the one inside Burlington, Queen City Iron and Metal on Intervale Road, is registered to handle junk excluding motor vehicles. The crushers are in Colchester and Hinesburg, so the car leaves town.

Title and paperwork rules in Vermont

Vermont rewrote its title law on July 1, 2024 under Act 165, and the old shortcut is narrower than people remember. The Department of Motor Vehicles now states it plainly: if you hold a Vermont registration in your name and the vehicle is a 2009 or older, you are not required to obtain a title, and the registration certificate is your ownership document. Hand over that certificate with a signed bill of sale, form VT-005, and the buyer gets the title when they register. The exemption in 23 V.S.A. 2012(10) only survives for a vehicle registered in Vermont that has not changed owners since January 1, 2024, so it does not follow the car forever. Anything newer needs the paper. If the title is lost, stolen, destroyed, mutilated or illegible, the form is VT-004, the Replacement Title Application, and the fee is $42 under 23 V.S.A. 2002(a)(5). No notary is involved. You affirm under penalty of perjury, and every owner named on the title has to sign. Mail it to 120 State Street in Montpelier or walk into the South Burlington DMV at 4 Market Street, open weekdays 7:45 to 4.

Burlington abandoned and inoperable vehicle rules

The text that matters is Chapter 20, Article VI of the Burlington Code of Ordinances, sections 20-155 through 20-161. Section 20-157(b) is the clock: no person in charge or in control of any property, as owner, tenant, occupant or lessee, may let a partially dismantled, nonoperating, wrecked, junked, discarded or unregistered vehicle remain longer than five days. Unregistered means no valid plate or validating sticker from any state. There are exactly three exceptions and they are narrow: a vehicle inside an enclosed building, a vehicle on a lawful business premises where it is necessary to that business, and a vehicle in a city depository. A tarp, a fence, a carport or antique plates are not among them. Section 20-156 separately bars parking any vehicle on a lawn or yard in a residential district, and the driveway carve-out only covers the strip planning and zoning actually approved. The police chief may order removal under 20-158, an impounded car is held thirty days under 20-159, and under 20-160 the towing and storage bill off private property goes to whoever controls the property, not to the car’s owner. Section 20-13 sets the fine at $50 to $200 with each day a separate offense. Code Enforcement sits in the Department of Permitting and Inspections, 645 Pine Street, 802-863-0442; the tow authority is the Burlington Police Department, non-emergency 802-658-2704.

How fast can I sell a junk car in Burlington before the five-day clock runs?

Call 1-800-935-8652 and we quote the car before Chapter 20’s five-day clock on an unregistered or wrecked vehicle even starts to matter, because a completed sale ends the exposure. The flatbed works the same truck routes the city reserves for heavy vehicles, Pine Street, Shelburne Street, Riverside Avenue, North Avenue and Battery Street, so tell us the block and we send a rig that fits it, even on a tight Old North End lot with no setback. If the title is already gone, Vermont lets you file the replacement at any of its ten DMV offices, not only the South Burlington counter, or finish it online.

Areas of Burlington we tow from

We work the whole city and the ring around it. The spine is US 7, which runs through Burlington as Shelburne Road, South and North Willard Street, Hyde Street and Riverside Avenue, while US 7 Alternate carries Shelburne Road into St. Paul Street and the Winooski avenues. US 2 is Main Street. VT 127, the Northern Connector, serves the New North End, I-189 drops onto Shelburne Road, and I-89 Exit 14 feeds Main Street from the east. Those corridors reach all eight wards, from Appletree Point and Starr Farm down to Flynn Avenue and the Innovation District. We run the same routes into South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, Essex, Essex Junction, Williston, Shelburne, Milton, Hinesburg and Jericho, which matters when the car is sitting at a relative’s place outside the city line.

• Old North End
• New North End
• Downtown
• Waterfront
• South End
• Hill Section
• Five Sisters
• Lakeside
• Pine Street corridor
• Riverside Avenue
• Mill-Grove Street
• Franklin Square

Frequently asked questions

How long can a junk car sit in a Burlington yard before the city acts?

Five days, and no warning is required first. Section 20-157(b) says no person in charge or in control of any property, as owner, tenant, occupant or lessee, may allow a partially dismantled, nonoperating, wrecked, junked, discarded or unregistered vehicle to remain longer than five days. There are only three exceptions: inside an enclosed building, on a business premises where the vehicle is necessary to that business, or in a city storage depository. Screening it or covering it does not stop the clock.

Can I park the dead car on my lawn while I sort it out?

Not legally. Section 20-156 makes it unlawful for any vehicle, running or not, to be parked on a lawn or yard in a residential district, and it puts the same duty on the property owner. Section 20-155 defines lawn or yard as unoccupied open space on a residential lot and excludes the driveway, but only the portion the Department of Planning and Zoning approved for vehicles. A worn gravel strip beside the house usually is not that.

If Burlington tows the car off my driveway, who gets the bill?

You do, if you control the property. Section 20-158 lets the chief of police or a designee remove a vehicle that appears to violate Article VI. Section 20-159 holds it thirty days before it can be disposed of under the law of finders of property. Section 20-160 assigns the towing and storage cost to the person in charge or control of the property the car came off. Only vehicles taken from the street are billed to the registered owner.

What is the fine for leaving an unregistered car on the property?

Section 20-13 makes a violation of Article VI a civil violation of $50 to $200 with a $50 waiver amount, and each day the violation continues is a separate offense. The same car is also reachable through the Minimum Housing Ordinance at section 18-111(d), which makes it unlawful to keep, maintain, store or deposit any inoperative, abandoned or dismantled motor vehicle on any property in violation of Chapter 20, Article VI.

Do I need a title to sell a junk car in Burlington?

Not always. The Vermont DMV says that if you hold a Vermont registration in your name and the vehicle is a 2009 or older, you are not required to obtain a title and the registration certificate is your ownership document. You give the buyer that certificate plus a signed bill of sale on form VT-005. For a newer vehicle, or if the registration is not in your name, you need the Vermont title before we can pay.

The title to my 2016 is gone. How do I replace it?

File form VT-004, the Replacement Title Application, with the Vermont DMV. The fee is $42 under 23 V.S.A. 2002(a)(5), the same amount the form itself lists for all titles other than vessels, ATVs and snowmobiles. It is not notarized; you affirm under penalty of perjury, and every owner on the title must sign. Mail it to 120 State Street, Montpelier VT 05603-0001, or bring it to the South Burlington DMV at 4 Market Street.

I have three unregistered cars on my lot. Is that a different problem?

Yes, a zoning one. The Comprehensive Development Ordinance defines an automobile or vehicle salvage yard as land used for collecting, wrecking, dismantling, storing or selling vehicles not in running condition, and states that three or more unregistered vehicles are considered a salvage yard. The CDO use table marks that use prohibited in every one of Burlington’s zoning districts. Separately, Article 5 allows no more than one unregistered vehicle in outdoor accessory storage.

Can you still pick up during a Burlington snow ban?

Usually yes, with timing. Burlington has no blanket seasonal ban; the public works director declares bans case by case, and when the parking lights flash the restriction runs 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. citywide and midnight to 6 a.m. in the downtown zone. We schedule outside those hours. A car left out during a ban draws a $75 ticket and gets moved to another street, or impounded to a remote site within five miles of the city line under section 20-56(d), with the removal charges added on, which is a worse outcome than selling it.

Ready to get rid of it? Call 1-800-935-8652 and we will quote your car in Burlington over the phone, tow it free, and pay you cash at pickup.

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Cash for junk cars across Vermont