Selling a junk or dead car in Murrysville

How Murrysville's code treats a junkyard

The junk rules we found in Murrysville's code are aimed at licensed dealers, and they read like a checklist for the yard:

• Burning or melting junk needs 12 hours' notice to the inspecting municipal employee or the Chief Administrator, with an attendant on duty the whole time.
• "No junkyard shall operate between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., prevailing time, except to remove any wrecked automobile from any public highway."
• Junked cars sit in rows "with at least 15 feet between each double row to permit movement of fire equipment."
• The dealer keeps permanent records with "the name and address from whom received," open to Council, its agent or any law enforcement officer.

So if you take a car to a licensed Murrysville yard, expect your name and address to go into its book.

Repair work and parts at home

The zoning definitions in Section 220-8 describe a repair garage as a place where "all storage of parts and dismantled vehicles and all repair work are conducted entirely inside a 'completely enclosed building.'" Those definitions do not put a clock on one dead car in a driveway. The municipality may have other rules that we did not find, so ask before a stripped car sits outside for a long stretch.

Pennsylvania's clocks

State law fills the gap, and its numbers are the ones to plan around. Leave an inoperable car unattended on a road or other public ground and, once 48 hours pass, the Vehicle Code presumes you abandoned it. On a neighbor's lot without permission the fuse is shorter: after 24 hours, the landowner may file a police report and have it hauled off, and police handle it as abandoned inside five business days. The mailed notice then opens a 30-day reclaim window, priced at the towing and storage bill, and PennDOT may approve disposal once it closes.

Title and plates from Westmoreland County

Westmoreland has no county title counter, because Pennsylvania issues titles at the state level. Murrysville sellers sign with a PennDOT-authorized agent looking on. It can be a dealer, tag service or notary. There you sign Section A, hand-letter your name and note the mileage while the agent watches. A title in two names needs both signatures. Is a Murrysville scrapyard or salvage dealer the buyer? Then the statute skips the notary. Lost the title? Form MV-38O, $72.00, orders a duplicate; junk car with no title has more.

The plate stays behind with you when the car leaves. Mail a Murrysville plate to PennDOT's Return Tag Unit, or cover the $11.00 transfer fee to use it on your next car. Westmoreland is one of the four counties in PennDOT's Pittsburgh emissions region. That matters if you were weighing repairs against a failed inspection.

Getting an offer

Reach us online or at (877) 421-6008. Give us the model, a ballpark mileage, a word on whether it cranks, and the titleholder. We can pick up on a farm lane, a driveway up a hillside road, or at a shop in Monroeville. The statewide rules are on the Pennsylvania page.