About 5 years ago I started buying crashed or broken Jeeps and flipping them for profits. Along the way I've retained a couple for my kids as they helped me work on them. Since I was flipping for money, I've also tracked my expenses on these. These are light collision, blown engine, blown trans, heavy hail damage vehicles that are too costly for insurance repairs, but can still have reasonable commuter value as lower dollar cars. Vehicles I was picking up for $500-800 price tags 5 years ago are now going for $2000-2400. What amazes me even more, is undamaged, clean, low mileage, used versions of these are selling for $6-10k. The book on many of these maxes out around $7-8k.

The export angle is one not often talked about. Where I am at, we have what we call Mexican road trains. These tend to be cars that are 6-12 years old, that may be like those described above, that are sold to Mexican nationals. These guys will buy one good operating large car or truck, they then tow bar 3-4 of them together, make a convoy of 3-4 of these trains, and at night, run them down Interstate 25 to Juarez Mexico. Personally, I think this is were a lot of the local beaters in my area are going.