Selling a scrap car in Midlothian

From our lot it’s one road: down Cicero Avenue, which carries IL-50 and IL-83 together, then east on 147th Street, where IL-83 turns. About two and a half miles and five minutes without traffic.

Where Midlothian sits

Midlothian is a village of 14,325 people (2020 Census) on about 2.8 square miles in Bremen Township, ZIP code 60445. It borders Crestwood, Robbins, Markham, Oak Forest and Posen. The village hall is at 148th Street and Pulaski Road, and the Midlothian Metra station on the Rock Island District line connects north to LaSalle Street Station and south to Joliet.

Inside the village we also use Pulaski, Kedzie and the Midlothian Turnpike. A stretch of the Tri-State Tollway runs inside the village limits too, though local streets are faster from Crestwood.

Mostly houses, and a lot of driveways

Nearly three quarters of Midlothian’s housing is single-family detached homes, by 2020 to 2024 census estimates, and about 76 percent of homes are owner-occupied. That makes a driveway or a garage the usual starting point here, with some reached from an alley.

Alley pickups work, with one condition in the village code: ten feet of the alley stays open and no driveway gets blocked (§ 10-15-6). If your dead car is jammed against a neighbour’s garage door, tell us so the driver plans the angle.

The two-day rule

This is the one to know. In Midlothian’s residential districts, a car that doesn’t work gets 48 hours outside before it breaks the zoning code. After that it has to be inside a garage or another closed building, and it can never sit in a yard, front, back or side (§ 4-18-22(B)(7)). No other town we serve is that quick.

Pushing the car onto the lawn doesn’t help either. Midlothian keeps cars off grass and front-yard areas unless the village has approved the spot for parking (§ 10-15-24). A non-running car sale gets it gone in one visit, and the side-by-side in our inoperable car rules guide shows how Midlothian compares.

Work trucks run on an even shorter clock: an hour, under the same section, for commercial vehicles and trailers in a residential district, and none at all on the residential right-of-way.

Midlothian street rules

• Overnight. Between 2:00 and 5:00 a.m., a car can’t stay on any Midlothian street for longer than half an hour (§ 10-15-5).
• Snow. At two inches the streets empty out until the plowing is finished, and owners are expected to move parked cars before the snow gets that deep (§ 10-15-12).
• For-sale signs. Outside a car lot with a dealer license, no car showing a “For Sale” sign can be parked anywhere in the village (§ 10-15-4), so a curbside sale of a dead car is out.

Flood-prone pockets

Water runs through Midlothian in four channels, Natalie Creek and Midlothian Creek among them, and all of it ends up in the Cal-Sag. The village’s 2019 stormwater capital plan singles out the places that flood: Jolly Homes, Belly Button Hill by 151st Street, Bremen Heights near Kenneth Avenue, and the land along Natalie Creek. A car that sat in that water can still be scrapped.

Landmarks that help us find you

The Metra station, village hall at 148th and Pulaski, the Cicero frontage or the Turnpike. Something like “two blocks off 147th, behind the gas station” is plenty.

From Midlothian we also cover Crestwood and Robbins, both just to the north. For the pickup itself, see scrap car removal.