I might be interested in a vehicle in NY on Copart. What determines if a license is required?
I can bid on "No License Required inventory" but what determines that?
Thanks for any info.

Only certain cars can be bid on with no license. The T's & C's spell this out.

The cars totally immersed in Salt water?

Individual states and sometimes individual Copart locations determines that.

Is it a 'salvage' branded title? Most of those require a 'broker'. Which is just a way that Copart guarantees that they will get their money.

Give us a few more details and I may be able to help more. We do most of our business with Copart here in Illinois and Missouri but have bought vehicles from other locations. It can vary a lot depending on several factors.

When I have looked it seems that any vehicle I had interest in required a broker. The pool for regular people to purchase wasn't as good.

A few details:
Car has a non-clean( does this mean.... a lien?) NJ title and is located in NY. It has left side damage and a little rear damage.Looks like it got side swiped. Car runs and drives. Shows 40k miles and is a 2010 BMW.

I imagine this will need a broker. I want this car for parts to use on a project I have been wanting to do. I need almost everything on the car from drivetrain to wiring harness. I want to build a car BMW should have.
Thanks for the help.

I am not familiar with the 'non clean' title designation. Damaged vehicles at Copart usually (although not always) have salvage branded titles.

Copart handles all vehicles with big fork trucks and all too frequently, they damage what they are handling. Copart invoices note that vehicles are handled with fork trucks and to expect damage which is NOT their responsibility. I have a Ram truck here right now that they jammed a metal brake line and snagged an e brake cable. Earlier this year, my son caught that they had knocked a hole in the tranny of vehicle. We passed on that one of course, but imagine someones surprise when they got it home. Most buyers do not look at the vehicles before they buy them. More and more buyers are overseas.

From paperwork snafus to outrageous fees to load out debacles to fork truck damage to their total indifference, Copart is one of if not the worst company I have ever had to do business with. But they have consolidated so much of the insurance pool vehicle business, that we have very little in the way of alternatives.

Just be careful.

Thanks ,the car is not open for bidding yet.
It is a reasonable distance away so I can look at it and yeah they have lots of fees.

Look it up on www.ridesafely.com They list a lot of the same vehicles and you can bid on them. If you win they need to be paid with in 24-48 hours. If they don't get paid the vehicle goes back to auction. This is the way it was when i used them about 9 years ago but check their site for details.

there is a section that is no license required

They look like brokers that allow you to use their license. After researching Copart they might be a good alternative. Lots of videos warning about buying salvage cars from Copart but a lot of them are aimed at
people who want to register the vehicle but buying for parts is ok. Also some of their live auctions get mysterious bids.
I noticed some funky odometer readings. I was looking at an 08 that looked good that showed 39,000 miles.

So unless you can get the car cheap it might not be worth it after calculating fees. Like Dave said 'be careful'

This is something I’ve been looking for also. Never thought of CoPart, they just opened one up south of town. I want to find a 2008 128 or 325 hardtop BMW to use the parts from my 128I convertible, the back glass-top leaked and put a foot of water in floorboard. It’s a low millage car with a great body but I’ll not spend $2500 for a top to leak again. Sorry for the high jack

Have you looked at www.car-part.com ?

With Copart's fee structure, it is almost impossible to buy anything for parts cheap enough to justify it. At one time you could, but that ship has sailed. Besides, the final sale prices are surprisingly high. Outrageous in fact.

Another insurance auction site is IAAI.com. Their fees used to be lower than Copart but I don’t know these days. Please post back if you use ne of them how what your experience was.

IAA and Copart fee structures are very similar.

We used to buy a few vehicles from IAA, but when they revamped their 'rules' a few years ago, we quit entirely. The two biggest reasons that we quit were that the vehicles were only available to review one day a week for a couple of hours which was NOT on sale day and that you could not start the vehicles. Both Copart and IAA facilities are near each other east of St Louis which is about 90 minutes from us. So one trip to only look at the vehicles and then another trip to pick up the purchases besides not being able to hear them run, will not work for us.

Copart still allows us to check out the cars during normal working hours and we can start them up. So in one trip, we can check out the vehicles and take home our purchases. But Copart is making it much more difficult to do that. I will spare you the details, but it is obvious that they are moving towards IAA's way of doing things. If they do, I am not sure what the best way to navigate that will be. It just gets to be such a pig-in-a-poke buying process that the unexpected surprises and expenses will surely mount up. But frankly, we are in the minority on this as most buyers do not inspect their prospective purchases. We only see a small handful of people looking at the vehicles on sale day. And more and more, the vehicles are not even in an area that is accessible to us. So................

A purchase from IAA if my memory is right

Roughly 1K in fees on a 4300 purchase.

Insurers pay very little $$ to sell cars at IAA/Copart. They (IAA/Copart) really do make it up on the buyers' end.

Absolutely!

IAA and Copart provide a lot of services and storage for the insurance companies. Their lots have literally thousands of vehicles. We see cars all the time that have been at that location for months and have even seen it stretch to well more than a year.

It used to be that the auctions needed buyers and would do quite a lot for them/us. Lunches, shirts, jackets, transportation several different ways, test track to drive the cars, use of jump boxes, etc. That's ALL gone. The sellers are the ones to be courted now and as many charges as possible are thrown onto the buyers.

And the buyers are treated with a mild contempt all too often. Just look at the pretty pictures, make your bids, pay your money, and make an appointment to pick it up.

DaveRS23 is spot on. everyone I have bought had and got more damage, the fees go on and on, they cater to over seas buyers. I stay away