Selling a dead car in Pullman

Pullman's own rules

We found no Pullman law on junk cars, so what follows is all from state statutes. That does not mean the city has no rules; it may well have a nuisance code of its own. The state itself leaves the junk-car process to local police, health departments and landowners, and lets cities add their own codes.

The state's junk-vehicle test

RCW 46.55.010 needs three boxes ticked before a car is a "junk vehicle":

• it has reached three years of age
• it is badly damaged; the statute's examples are a broken window or windshield and missing wheels, tires, motor or transmission
• it looks like it cannot run
• what it is worth comes down to scrap

The inspection falls to an officer, a health department, or someone else the law authorizes. When the car is parked on a stranger's land, that owner sends notice to the people on the car's record, and after more than 15 days with no claim it can go. Dumping a junk car on another person's property is a gross misdemeanor here, and the owner of record repays twice the removal cost.

If a tow yard already has it

Washington treats a Pullman car as abandoned once a registered tow operator has held it 120 hours straight. The yard then mails a notice of custody and sale; when 15 days pass with nobody claiming the car, it is sold at public auction. Out on a street, tabs that lapsed over 45 days back are enough for an impound. Towed or impounded explains your choices.

Paperwork for a Whitman County sale

Pullman sellers sign the title's release section and pass it to the buyer. Add an odometer statement if the law needs one. Washington also wants a bill of sale, though not when the title already records what was paid and on what day. Your signature needs no notary; the buyer's title application is the notarized one.

You then have 5 days to file the Vehicle Report of Sale. Keep the plates: put them on a similar vehicle you own later, or hand them back to the state. And since Washington's emission checks stopped on January 1, 2020, no smog test stands between you and a sale.

Getting an offer

Call (877) 421-6008 or use the form for a Pullman offer. We pick it up in an apartment lot in town or way out on a farm road. Our closest other pages are far: in a straight line, Spokane Valley is near 64 miles off and Walla Walla near 72. State rules are on the Washington page.