Scrap car pickup in Palos Heights

Palos Heights is an easy run from our lot: up Cicero Avenue to Cal Sag Road, west on 127th Street and onto Harlem Avenue. Call it four miles and eight minutes without traffic.

The city around Harlem and College Drive

Palos Heights is a city of 12,068 people (2020 Census) covering just under four square miles in Palos and Worth townships, ZIP code 60463. Worth sits to the northeast, Palos Hills to the west and Palos Park to the southwest, with Orland Park across its southern side.

Two state routes meet inside the city. Harlem Avenue (IL-43) runs north and south through it, and IL-83 crosses it as 119th Street, which the city calls College Drive. City hall is on College Drive at number 7607. The Palos Heights station on Metra’s SouthWest Service line runs to Union Station, and three Pace bus routes serve the city.

An owner-occupied town, and an older one

Palos Heights has one of the highest home-ownership rates in our area: about 93 percent of occupied homes are owner-occupied, by 2020 to 2024 census estimates. Around 82 percent of homes are single-unit, but only 60 percent are detached houses, so townhomes and attached units are common. The population skews older, with a median age of 54.3 and nearly a third of residents 65 or over.

That mix points to attached garages and short driveways more than curbside pickups. If you live in a townhome complex, check whether the association has rules about service trucks, and let it know a tow is coming.

If the car belongs to a parent who no longer drives, the title is the first thing to check. The titled owner, or someone with legal authority to act for them, has to sign. Illinois requires a scrap buyer to record two IDs from the seller and collect proof of ownership, so sort out who is selling before you book. The Illinois scrap paperwork guide walks through the common situations, and the page on scrapping without a title covers lost titles.

The Palos Heights garage rule

Palos Heights handles inoperable cars through its property maintenance code. It adopts the 2021 International Property Maintenance Code with its own version of section 302.8: in residential districts, unregistered and inoperable motor vehicles have to be garaged (§ 156.01). In nonresidential districts, no vehicle may be kept in major disassembly or disrepair.

The same section caps commercial vehicles parked on residential property and bars box trucks, dump trucks and tractor-trailers there. If your dead vehicle is a box truck in the driveway, it’s a problem twice over.

Parking on Palos Heights streets

• Overnight. No parking on any street from 2:00 to 5:00 a.m., any day (§ 73.011).
• Snow. Once snow on the street passes one inch, parking is limited to three minutes for passengers or 30 for loading, from the start of the snowfall until eight hours after it stops, and until removal is done (§ 73.012).
• Alleys. A car in an alley has to leave ten feet clear and not block a driveway (§ 73.013).

A car that died on a Palos Heights street has a short life there. The scrap car removal page explains how a curbside pickup goes.

Pointing us to the car

Useful landmarks: Harlem and College Drive, city hall on College Drive, the Metra station, 127th Street on the way in. For a townhome complex, the complex name and building number get the driver there.

Palos Heights borders two more towns we serve, Worth to the northeast and Palos Park to the southwest. Our home village, Crestwood, is a few minutes east along Cal Sag Road.