Cash for junk and scrap cars in Crestwood

Crestwood is where we’re based, so this page is a little different from the others. There’s no long drive to describe. Our lot on 135th Street sits just east of Cicero Avenue, and almost every address in the village is a short hop away.

The village at a glance

Crestwood is a village of about 10,800 people (2020 Census) in southwest Cook County, covering roughly three square miles in Worth and Bremen townships. Everything is ZIP code 60418. Alsip lies to the north and Oak Forest to the south. Robbins shares the village line to the east, and Midlothian sits just south of Crestwood along Cicero.

Two features shape almost every pickup here. One is Cicero Avenue, which carries both IL-50 and IL-83 on the stretch between 127th and 147th Streets. The other is the Calumet-Sag Channel, which cuts across the north end; 127th Street crosses it on a bridge inside the village. Cal Sag Road, part of IL-83, angles northwest out of Crestwood toward Palos Heights.

Condos, apartments and the lots behind them

Crestwood has more apartment and condo buildings than most of its neighbours. Census data for 2020 to 2024 counts more than half of the village’s housing units in buildings of five or more units, against about 42 percent in single-unit homes. Roughly three in four homes are owner-occupied, so many of those units are condos.

For a scrap sale that means a lot of pickups from parking lots rather than driveways. Those are easy as long as two things are sorted before the truck arrives: the manager or association knows a tow is coming, and the car isn’t boxed in by other residents’ cars. If there’s a gate or a numbered space, tell us on the call.

Street parking rules that catch a dead car

Crestwood is strict about street parking, which matters if your car died at the curb.

• No overnight parking. The village code bans parking on any public way from 2:00 to 6:00 a.m. (§ 77.02(Q)).
• Snow. Once snow on the street passes one inch, parking is limited to a few minutes for loading from the start of the snowfall until eight hours after it stops, and longer if plowing isn’t finished (§ 77.04(D)).
• Street cleaning. Temporary signs can bar parking on posted days and hours.
• Only passenger cars. Beyond loading time, streets are limited to passenger cars with seven seats or fewer (§ 77.04(B)), which matters if the dead vehicle is a work truck.
• No for-sale displays. You can’t park a car on the street to show it for sale (§ 77.04(C)).

When a car stops running in Crestwood

Crestwood’s nuisance code treats an inoperable car left in public view, on public or private property, as a nuisance (§ 94.081(K)). “Inoperable” there means the engine, wheels or other parts have been removed, altered or damaged so the car can’t run for seven days or more. A car kept inside a building is exempt, and short repairs of up to three consecutive days are allowed.

When police or code enforcement act, they issue a notice of impending tow, and the car is scheduled for towing on the tenth day after that notice. The code also bars parking any vehicle on grass or gravel in front, side or rear setbacks, so pushing the dead car onto the lawn doesn’t solve it.

Our guide to inoperable car rules in the southwest suburbs puts Crestwood’s rule next to the neighbouring towns’.

Finding your car

Without a Metra station in the village, people give us shopping-strip and road directions: a lot off Cicero, a building near the Cal-Sag bridge on 127th, a side street west of Cicero toward Cal Sag Road. Any of those works. The closest train station is Midlothian’s, on the Metra Rock Island line, and Pace routes 383 and 385 run through toward Midway.

What we take from Crestwood

Old sedans that sat in a condo space too long, a minivan with a dead transmission, a pickup that won’t pass anything anymore. We buy them running or not, and the scrap car removal page explains the pickup step by step.

Next door, we also pick up in Robbins and Midlothian to the east and south, and in Palos Heights out Cal Sag Road.