Selling a junk or dead car in Sachse

How Sachse decides a car is junked

Sec. 9-7 asks three questions at once. Is it a self-propelled car? Has its registration lapsed, or is the sticker gone? And is it wrecked, taken apart, or broken past a set clock? Sachse counts 72 straight hours for public land, and 30 straight days for a driveway or yard.

Sachse calls such a car a public nuisance as soon as people can see it from a street or another public place, and Sec. 9-7(B)-(C) makes keeping it an offense. The city's Common Code Violations page puts the idea simply. If a car in public view can't legally or mechanically be used, it's junked.

A pile of spare parts can count as well. Sec. 6-7 folds used vehicle components that are not in use into its definition of junk.

From first warning to the courtroom

• Citation first, maybe. Sec. 9-7(H) lets the enforcement employee hand out a warning, or even a citation, ahead of the mailed notice.
• The notice. After the city decides the car is junked, the code requires "not less than ten days' notice," delivered by hand or certified mail. Day ten is the deadline to have the car gone, and also the deadline to ask for a hearing.
• The judge. Miss it and "the municipal court judge of the city shall hold a public hearing on the abatement and removal of the junked vehicle." There, Sachse presumes the car does not run unless you prove it does.
• The penalty. Sachse classes it as a misdemeanor with a $200 ceiling, and the judge can order the car hauled off.

Shuffling the car to a cousin's house across town does not help. The move "has no effect on the proceeding if the junked vehicle constitutes a public nuisance at the new location."

A closed garage is the exemption that clearly works. Sec. 9-7(G) covers a car parked indoors, walls on every side, invisible to anyone outside. A tarp is a poor bet, since that subsection says a car cover is not an appropriate screen for the dealer, junkyard and collector cars it requires to be screened. And a car the city removes as junked can never be rebuilt or driven again; the state gets a report from Sachse inside five days.

Leaving it on a Sachse street

The street sections we read give ordinary cars no flat hour limit. Age changes that. A broken car older than five years, left alone on public land past the 48-hour mark, becomes an abandoned vehicle under Sec. 9-7(A). Police then have ten days to send the owner a certified letter. Your claim window is 20 days from that letter, and you pay the tow, preservation and storage bill to get it back. Storage can be charged for up to ten days before the letter is mailed. Nobody claims it, and it goes to a public auction.

Code questions go to Neighborhood Services, 3815 Sachse Rd., Building B, or 469-429-4793. The office keeps Monday to Thursday hours of 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and closes Fridays at 11:30 a.m.

Paperwork across two counties

Sachse is split between Collin and Dallas counties, and by straight-line distance the two tax offices tie. Dallas County's office, 500 Elm Street, Suite 1200, sits about 19 miles southwest of the middle of town. Collin County's, 2300 Bloomdale Rd., Suite 2302, McKinney, is about 19 miles north. Either way it is a county office, since Texas runs title work through each county's tax assessor-collector.

What a Sachse seller hands over and files:

• The title, signed, carrying the sale date and the mileage. No notary stamp is involved in Texas.
• A signed Form 130-U for the buyer, listing what was paid.
• A transfer notice to TxDMV inside 30 days, either online or on paper Form VTR-346. It is what keeps the next owner's tolls and tickets from landing on you.
• Your plates and registration sticker, if you want them. The plates may go on your replacement vehicle; otherwise deface them.

No title in the drawer? Form VTR-34 orders a certified copy. Our guide on selling with no title walks through it.

Getting an offer

Call (877) 421-6008 or begin online. Expect questions on the model year, the odometer, and whose name sits on the title. Then the truck shows up wherever the Sachse car is parked, whether that means your own driveway, a spot behind your building, or the bay of a garage that gave up on it. Neighboring pages cover Murphy, Rowlett, Garland and Wylie, and Texas has the statewide picture.