Outpound's Sell My Impounded Car Blog

You walk into a tow yard expecting to pay a bill and retrieve your vehicle. But what happens if you don't retrieve it? Can the tow company eventually look at your car, decide you've waited too long and simply make it theirs? The short answer is: under certain circumstances, a towing or storage company can eventually acquire or transfer ownership rights—but it generally cannot simply declare itself the new owner because your vehicle has been...

An impounded car doesn't become “abandoned” simply because its owner hasn't picked it up for a few days. But leave it sitting behind the tow yard fence long enough, and the situation can change from “my car is impounded” to “I may be losing my legal opportunity to recover it.” That's an important distinction because abandonment isn't necessarily about whether you intend to give up the vehicle. It can be determined by state law, required...

Why Do I Still Owe the Loan? Watching an impounded vehicle disappear into the auction process is bad enough. Finding out afterward that the car is gone and the loan may still be very much alive can make an already expensive situation considerably worse. It sounds backward. If you no longer have the car, why would you still have to pay for it? Because the vehicle and the loan attached to it are two different...

You already paid for the tow with your car. So why does the bill keep growing every single day your vehicle sits in the tow yard? Welcome to one of the nastiest surprises of having a vehicle impounded: the tow may happen once, but storage charges can keep piling up daily. In many situations, yes, a towing or impound facility can charge a daily storage fee. Exactly what it can charge, when those charges begin,...

There may be no four words more terrifying to hear about an impounded vehicle than: “It went to auction.” Until that moment, you may have been fighting storage fees, chasing paperwork, waiting for an insurance company, trying to locate a title, dealing with a lienholder or simply trying to scrape together enough money to get the vehicle released. Those problems are frustrating, but at least there may still be a vehicle sitting behind the fence...

When a wrecked vehicle is sitting behind the gates of a tow yard and the owner discovers it may cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to get it released, the tow company usually becomes the immediate villain. They have the vehicle, they are presenting the bill, and storage charges may continue increasing every day. The anger is understandable, but the company holding the vehicle isn't necessarily the company responsible for creating the financial mess. Let's...

The Impound Clock Doesn't Care If You're Waiting When Sue B.'s 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE 350 4MATIC SUV was impounded, she didn't ignore the problem. She did exactly what most people would do. She started making phone calls, gathering paperwork, following instructions, and trying to satisfy every requirement she was given so she could get her vehicle released. Unfortunately, good intentions don't stop the impound clock. At the time, Sue owed $1,454.08 in impound and storage...

The Bad News Doesn't End When The Tow Truck Leaves Many vehicle owners make one dangerous assumption after their financed vehicle is impounded: if they simply walk away from it, the loan somehow disappears with it. If only life worked that way. An impound yard isn't a magical debt eraser. It doesn't care what you owe your lender, how upside down you are on the loan, or whether you're making payments every month. Its job...

The Real Question Is...Why Would You? Ignoring an impounded vehicle feels surprisingly easy during the first few days. Life gets busy, money is tight, and convincing yourself you'll deal with it next week sounds reasonable enough. Unfortunately, impound lots don't operate on good intentions. They operate on invoices, and every day your vehicle remains behind that fence, another charge quietly finds its way onto your bill. That's why the question isn't simply, "What happens if...

Most people assume that once their vehicle disappears behind an impound fence, they're the only person who can get it back, and that’s not exactly true! Depending on the circumstances, someone else may be able to purchase your vehicle directly from impound—or buy it from you while it's still sitting in storage. The problem is that most owners don't learn that option exists until they've already spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars on storage...