image: NYTimes
Here’s bad news for old car owners, especially if the live in the state of New York: after decades of dropping car thefts due to improved new car anti-theft technology, car theft is up, and old cars are a major target. he favorite is the Econoline, because they typically weigh some 5,000 lbs, which can fetch $600-$700. And New York laws make it relatively easy, as no title is required to scrap a car more then eight years old. In a recent four week period, over 70% of the cars stolen were over eight years old.
That law dates back to the 70s, when abandoned cars clogged the streets. A DMV Form (MV-35 or MV-37) serves as a proxy, and is commonly filled out by someone other than the thief, although the paper trail does often lead back to the perps. Still, there is a push now to get the law changed again.
I’m surprised the law’s remained unchanged for so long.
That is pretty crazy that the car only has to be 8 years old to be scrapped without any proper proof of ownership. Depending on the sources the average age of a vehicle on the road today is 10-11 years old. So that would mean that around have of the vehicles on the road are vulnerable though considering the rust issues the average age in NY maybe younger than the nationwide average.
For what it’s worth, the average Econoline isn’t some plush Club Wagon but a commercial cargo vehicle. Most of them aren’t even colors like the pic, just white.
Yup, go into just about any Home Depot or similar store at just about any time of day and there will almost always be at least 1 white Econoline Cargo van though frequently they carry a company name on the side. Now that I think about it that may explain why the Econoline is the most popular to steal. Many are frequently filled with tools to pawn or sell, selling the van for scrap may just be a convenient way to dispose of the evidence and put a little cash in the pocket to boot. Get the right one and you’ll get a lot more than the $350-$450 the van will bring at current prices.
That’s exactly what happened to a carpenter who was working on a neighbor’s house. He drove to Home Depot for some materials, and when he came out the van was gone, along with thousands of dollars worth of carpentry tools. The van was probably dumped after they cleaned it out.
It must be a coincidence in the making, but the 2013 Ford Econoline Vans same generational type which were featured on this article also happened to be a revolving Ad here as well SMH.
No coincidence it is google ads at work. Econoline is in the title and on the page so ad sense says that this must be a good place for an ad for an Econoline. Since you’ve clicked on it your particular computer will now likely attract ads for cargo vans.
Adblock will fix that quite nicely.
There’s a CC rule that anyone who says that needs to make a donation. How do you think we keep this going? 🙂
Amazing that you don’t need a title, I got grief trying to junk a title-less rustier than the Titatnic Corvair parts car that I killed for the engine and I wanted no money for it, I just wanted it gone.
Is this really the last year for the E-Series?
yes, and they’ve been winding down already. No diesel option for the last year or two, plus other minor changes.
Amazing. It is just such a staple. I think almost everyone in the US & Canada has ridden in an E-Series at least once.
Doesn’t surprise me, but it is disappointing to hear. Australia’s recent purple patch was riding on iron ore prices. The ball was in the supplier’s court as we shifted from contract to spot pricing. That has eased off, but one byproduct of this was materials disappearing from worksites. Copper piping – as an extreme example – was literally being pulled from functioning outside hot water units.
Another example; our local council has a hard rubbish pickup once a year where trash is left out on the sidewalk and collected by council for recycling or landfill. You would always see people in a van, ute or with trailer trawling for metal goods such as fridges, bikes, etc. This is illegal, but still the opportunists take advantage. The smarter councils now have a phone-in policy. When you have something of this nature to dispose of, you call them and they pick it up within a few days. No opportunity to trawl, because the disposal is in small increments and randomised depending on when the household is doing the disposal.
I could always tell when copper prices were up- I repair service station equipment and the little brass chuck, about 1 inch long, on the end of automatic tyre inflators would always get cut off…
Makes cents.
Did almost all the servos along Grand Junction Rd one day, someone got a decent haul!
Lost my Monaro in Adelaide. Don’t think it was scrapped.
We have the major trash pickup once a year here as well. I have gotten to the point of not taking my crap out to the street until the morning of pickup day, if at all possible. I don’t care if the trash gets hauled away by the contractor or by someone looking to make some money. What I do care about is that the scavengers tend to leave a mess behind for me to clean up.
I’ve never gotten the “it’s illegal to take one’s junk put out on the curb”. While I can understand just plain joe’s gripe about the scavengers leaving things a mess (having been there on more than one occasion) I’ve got no problem with who takes my garbage on spring cleaning pickup day. I only care that it’s gone – and if somebody thinks they can actually make use of my trash, then God bless ’em.
Then again, I’ve lost count of how many ‘junked’ bicycles I’ve picked up, refurbished, and resold to college students as transportation. And then there’s the Craftsman tractor I just picked up in the same manner, only I managed to catch it while it was still on the discarder’s trailer so he dumped it in my driveway rather than the county transfer station. It runs just fine now, so all I need to find is a matching plow.
As to the leaving the place a mess, I always found the best way to head that off was to be there in the morning once the trash was put out, but before the county truck came thru. Giving the scavengers a small hand tossing the stuff in their vehicle is a wonderful way to make sure the remainder stays piled neat. And, in return, they were always happy to help me re-pile anything that got messy in the process.
Syke, I can’t tell you the amount of sidewalk illegality I ‘may’ have participated in…
So let me get this straight… Abandoned cars littered the streets of New York back in it’s cess pool years and the solution then was to let the low lives, who would otherwise abandon and strip the cars they just stole, junk them instead free of that pesky documentation that would pretty much convict them?
Interesting legislative tactic, get rid of the red tape for criminals. As long as the city doesn’t look like a crime ridden hell hole it’s all good I guess. Police don’t have to do their jobs and actually find the cars, scrap yards don’t need file cabinets and prisons won’t get overcrowded. Everyone wins! Well except the victims…
There are two or more NYCs depending on your opinion. You can visit the Disneyfied Times Square (which I avoid) or you can visit the real NYC.
It is not just crooks that use MV-37, I know several straight edge people in Central New York who use the rules to legally scrap vehicles.
Ouch. As a NY state resident with a seven year old car, I think you just planned my next year for me…I’ll be chasing my state rep.
You don’t need a title to sell a car for scrap in Michigan either. The tow truck driver can grab a car off the street, fill out the form, mosey over to the scrap yard and make some easy money.
Around Detroit, the most stolen vehicles in recent years are vans, because the thieves use them to haul all the other stuff they steal. I mean, if you spend an afternoon stripping the aluminum siding off someone’s house, you can’t put all that in a sedan. You need a van. One of my coworkers was at a job site one day, with his ratty old Caravan. When he walked out to his van, he could see the exhaust, but didn’t remember leaving it running. When he got in, he saw that the steering column was torn up. The thief got it started, but couldn’t break the steering column lock, so gave up and left.
If you ask the scrap yards in Michigan, they say title needed. Realistically, you don’t since no one is checking.
My 95 Aurora disappeared from my driveway several years ago, aluminum block engine included. Never found, so it probably went direct to the scrap yard for cash.
I would believe one way to slow potential thieves down would be to paint your business name on the same or if it’s ratty, just make it some wild color to be painfully conspicuous. I also do remember visits to New York all through the early/mid 80’s with hulks of cars all over the place (mostly it seemed on Van Wyck Drive and the L.I. expressway in and around Brooklyn) . . . . guess that’s because unlike California, they didn’t have canyons to roll the carcasses into . . .