How To Buy Cars at Copart - Tutorial

What's going on YouTube? So today I'm going to answer several questions that I've gotten from you guys, and that is, how does Copart work? We're going to go through signing up for your new account on Copart. We're going to go through the deposit structure so you can understand how the deposits work, if you even need to deposit. We're going to go over brokers, if you need a broker in your state, and if you do not need a broker. If you don't, you can just bid on your own. If you do need a broker, you're going to have to go through a third-party broker. We're going to go through some of the most common terminology, like what does some of the letters stand for, what does enhanced mean, what is pure sale, what is reserve, what is minimum bid, blah, blah, blah. We're going to go over a lot of that stuff in this video. So instead of talking about what we're going to talk about, let's just get into it. All right, so I mean the most basic step and the very first step to getting into Copart is registering for a Copart account at www.copart.com. So you go to register, and this is where you got to enter all your personal information. Are you a business? Are you an individual? Business name, first name, last name, email, company address, blah, blah, blah, phone number, like you got to set all this up. Okay, this is self-explanatory. Put all this stuff in, and it's going to ask you, all right, step number one is going to be to complete the form. Number two, you need to upload your ID or your business license or licenses using the upload form. All right, they're going to email you your member number and your password within five to seven minutes. Next, you need to log in within seven days using your member number and password. Be sure that you log in by the seventh day or you're going to have to register again. Now, once you get done with that, you are signed up and you have a Copart account. Now you can log in just like this. You go to copart.com slash login. You can enter your member number or your user ID or your email address, enter your password, and then click sign into your account. And bingo, welcome to your page. All right, this is where you are going to see everything. Now, to begin, I'm going to show you a little bit of how to navigate this Copart website here. So you go over to my account. All right, go to upgrades and deposits. This is a very important part of using Copart. So here we are in the upgrades and deposit page. All right, Copart has a great thing called the Premier Advantage. The Premier is definitely the way to go, but not everybody has a $600 one-time fee. So there's a $200 registration fee, and then there's a one-time $400 deposit. And of course, all the copies of your current license or anything, if those are applicable to your state. So upgrading to Premier gives you a ton of buying power. I mean, an absolute ton of buying power. You can bid on all the auction lanes at once. So like A, lane A, lane B, and lane C, you can see all of those at the same time. If you do anything less than the $600 initial fee, you can only bid on one lane at a time. Now, the way the deposits work is when you create a brand new account, you will have automatically with no deposit, $1,000 of bidding power. You can only bid on one car per auction and you only get $1,000. So if a car goes to $1,050, you are out. You can no longer bid. Now, the way this works is if you want $2,000 of bidding power, you need to put down a $100 deposit. If you want $3,000 of bidding power, you need to put down a $200 deposit. $4,000 would be a $300 deposit. $5,000 would be a $400 deposit. So you can either click the upgrade to Premier button, or you can increase buying power by going down here and clicking add a deposit. Now, when you get to this page, it's going to want you to log in yet again, just to verify that you're who you are. And you can see already I've got $1,000 buying power. Nothing is tied up in bids. And what do we want to increase our bids to? Let's say we want to do $3,000. You go down here and you click continue, and it's going to want a $300 deposit. So in this case, I was incorrect at the beginning of the video, so just scratch that. For $3,000, it's $300. So basically 10%, $4,400, $5,500, et cetera, et cetera. And if you're going to go all the way up to $5,000 with a $500 deposit, you might as well just pay that $600 and get your premium or Premier account right here. That would be the best thing to do if you're going to be going that high. Anyway, total charges, $600. Just click upgrade and you're good to go. Now, once you've decided how much you want to bid, you get a general idea if you want cars under $1,500, $2,000, then you know you need to put down $150 to $200 to bid on those. You're good to go. Now, if you put down like $200 or $300, you can start bidding on multiple cars at a time. I don't know the specifics of how that works, but I do know that like $300, you can definitely bid on two to three cars at a time. So there you go. Now let's talk about finding vehicles. So we're going to go to their vehicle finder and we're going to come over here to the vehicle finder on the right. We're going to search for any, you can do automobiles, boats, dirt bikes, heavy trucks, industrial, jet ski, I'm talking too fast for myself, motorcycles, whatever you want, you can click that. But for the purposes of this video, we're going to stick to automobile. We'll do 1935 to 2019, all makes, all models, and we'll do within 50 miles of the zip code 73110 and click search. Now this is going to bring up a page of all kinds of cars. These are cars that aren't even up for auction yet. The one that say future, these aren't even ready yet. So we're going to click sale date so that it sorts by the cars selling soonest. All right. So the next auction available is 1126 of 18 at eight o'clock PM. And this is actually their, what do they call this? Their nightcap auction or something like that. All right. So their first available auction is 1126 of 18 at eight o'clock PM. This is what's going to be called their nightcap auction. They do these at eight o'clock at night, but you'll see there's only a few of these on here, right? Just a few of them on here. And then you go into 1127 at noon. This is when the regular auction in my city is. So this right here is what we're going to focus on. Now there's a lot of things to take into consideration here. Like what is an R? What is an E? All right. R means run and drive. If you click on this, it will, it says right here, at the time the vehicle arrived to Copart's location, Copart verified the vehicle does run on its own and move forward and backward under its own power. Now keep in mind, run and drive does not guarantee you that you're going to be able to jump on the highway, hit 60 miles an hour, and everything's going to be good. In fact, run and drive just means that it moved under its own power. It can have a blown head gasket. It could have rods knocking. It could have a rear main seal blowing oil out. The transmission could have a bad second, third, fourth gear. Okay. All it means is that it started and it went forward and backwards. That's it. So do not ever think that run and drive means that you've got a green light to buy something that's going to take you wherever you got to go. Go inspect these for yourself. Next, we have an E. E is for enhanced. All right. Enhanced is basically nothing. All right. Vehicles where the seller has authorized Copart to perform an enhancement service to the vehicle such as wash and vacuum or protective covering over the vehicle. And that's pretty much it. It means it does not necessarily run and drive. As you saw with my $265 Cadillac, it was an enhanced vehicle, but it ran and drove, started up and drove just fine. So enhanced doesn't mean that it won't run or it won't drive or that it won't be reliable. For whatever reason, whoever is selling it just didn't care. So again, very important. Go check these out for yourself because an enhanced vehicle may run and drive reliably and you'll get it at a great cheap price. Whereas some of these running drives may not actually run and drive reliably. You know, you got to be real careful with this. Now we've got other codes like this one right here. Here's an S. S means that it starts. All right. Copart verified it starts, but be very cautious on something like this. It starts, but it may not move under its own power. This could be a bad transmission. Sometimes flood cars will be enhanced, even though they may run and drive. I've bought flood cars that you literally go put the key in, they fire right up and they run and drive great, but they're listed as enhanced. Some of these start ones may drive. Then again, they may not. So again, it's very important. You use due diligence when purchasing a car from Copart. Next, we've got the D's. People wonder what is a D? That is a donation. I've had great luck with donated vehicles. I have had great, great success with donated vehicles so far. So the net proceeds from the sale of the vehicle will benefit a charity, which is great. So you're doing a good service. And in my experience, I've gotten some great, great cars from these people. Now, let's look at some of the letters over here. CT, that means certificate of title. OK, means my state of Oklahoma, Florida would be FL. Right here is probably a rebuilt Florida title. Yeah, Florida certificate of title rebuildable is what that means. You've got a front end damage, water flood damage. This will be a flood salvage FS for Oklahoma. You can click on this. All right. And it will show this is an enhanced, although this may run. You might be able to put a key in it and fire right up, or it may have a seized up engine. You just don't know. Secondary damage, biohazard chemical. This could be blood. This could be water. This could be mold. This could be rotten food, mildew. It could be all kinds of stuff. Now let's talk about a pure sale. This is a pure sale, which means if you bid $200 on this and you are the high bidder, you will win this car for $200 period. Now we've got not just pure sales. We got some other ones too. So let's have a look at some things that are not pure sales. Let's take a look at this 2012 BMW right here. Let's see if this is on a pure sale or a reserve minimum bid. OK, so this is a minimum bid. Basically a minimum bid is the same thing as a reserve. It means the seller has placed a reserve price on the lot. So if the reserve price is not surpassed during the auction, the seller has until 6 p.m. one business day after the sale to accept the bid, or they can counter you, or they can just decline your offer and relist it. So a minimum bid is basically nothing more than a reserve on the car. Now let's talk about on approval over here on the right side of your screen. On approvals are the ones I absolutely hate the most. On approval means the vehicle sold on approval will not be released to members unless and until the seller notifies Copart of its acceptance of the high bid. They have until 6 p.m. the next business day following the day of the auction to notify Copart of such acceptance. So what does that mean? That means if you win the bid on this for $4,000, you're probably not going to get it. All right. They will counter you possibly, or they will just relist it. On approvals, I just can't stand them. I like reserves because when you pass the reserve, you know you're going to win. If you bid on a pure sale, you know you're going to win on an approval. If you bid your $4,000 on this, you may not win it, and they will tie up that deposit of yours. So you can't bid. You lose that buying power. So if you bid $4,000 on this, you lose $4,000 worth of buying power until they approve or decline this bid. Now some of these cars have buy-it-nows like this Mercedes S430. You can buy it now for $1,750, or you can make them an offer, and if they accept the offer, you get the car. So I love these ones with buy-it-nows and make offers. You got your lane row here, which tells you where at Copart it's at, so you can go look at it. You know when the auction is going to start, but there's something very important to look at here. Some of these cars that are enhanced like this one that don't run and drive, it's very, very, very important to look down here where it says keys and see if it even has keys, because you may end up bidding and winning a car that doesn't have any keys at all, and you're going to be out the money to get the keys just to find out if it even runs. Now another cool thing about Copart is they give on a lot of their vehicles free auto check reports. You can just click on this report. It usually makes you prove that you're not a bot or something by clicking this I am not a robot, and then it'll bring up your auto check report. Unfortunately, my computer is going really slow right now. All right, so here you go. Here's the auto check report on this right now. It's got a branded title, odometer problems, rebuilt title, salvage auction, blah, blah, blah. This thing's got some serious issues, right? But it's a free auto check report, so there you go. You really can't beat free. Now if you want a Carfax report, I work with a company that will give you a Carfax report for like $4.95. You can just highlight this, right click, copy, then go to the link in the description and the link that I'll put in the comment section pinned for you guys. Click on that link, paste this VIN number, and get you a cheap Carfax report. So one more time, all of these numbers here all mean something different. Like all these show that they're at Oklahoma City, but in my particular city, we have two different lots. We have two co-parts out here. So anything with a two on it in my area means it is at the sub-lot. Everything else means it's at the regular main co-part, lot number 18. So these numbers, N000, VIN 5, SD, AA020, SC006, CD15, these are all telling you where you can find the car at your local co-part. So when you go there, a lot of times they will give you a map so you can navigate your way to these vehicles more easily. And look right here, this is a 2006 Land Rover. I'm actually interested in this, guys. I wasn't even looking. No joke, I'm not looking for anything, but this is a repossession. And if it's got a P next to it, that means the title is pending. Be careful with those because you may find out they couldn't get the title. But, uh, no odometer, enhanced vehicle, vandalism. Oh, it's got no keys, no keys. You can scroll through the pictures. It's not bad looking. I mean, the interior does look like someone, someone definitely tore it up. There's a lot of nuts and bolts from where someone got into the shifter. Yeah, I don't know, but it's a buy it now for 1900. You can always make a, make an offer on it. See, so it'll show you up here. This one, this one is a repo and it's been vandalized. You got things like a CT. That means it's a clean certificate of title or it should be doesn't always mean clean. It just means it has a certificate of title. Usually they're very good about telling you if it's a rebuilt title, but I have purchased cars that they missed it and it did not have a clean title and they have offered to buy those cars back, um, with no penalty to me. So ST salvage title FS is a flood salvage CT certificate of title. Let's see if we've got any different ones in here. I think that's pretty much going to cover. I don't want, I don't want to waste your time with stuff, you know, little stuff that you'll figure out on your own as you go. Basically take your time. Uh, RP again, repossession. Uh, I think RT is rebuilt title certificate of title rebuilt. Yep. All right. Uh, P X there's one you don't see every day. This is pedal non-public clean time. I have, I've had so many of you ask me what pedal means. So here's what I'm going to tell you. I don't even know what it means. I had to look it up. And when I Googled, uh, pedal, if you go to Google and type in a P E D D L E and copart, you'll see, you can sell your car with pedal.com pedal. Basically, let me just, I don't want to talk any trash about it because I don't know them, but from what I understand, pedal buys junk cars, basically cars that have been sitting in cars that people don't, you know, really torn up junk cars. They will buy your junk and then they run it through copart. So be very careful. And usually, at least in my state, anything sold by pedal has to be purchased by a dealership only. So the general public will not buy pedal cars out here. Now, like I said, keep in mind, all auction, all auctions are different in different cities. It's hard to say exactly what everything, you know, how everything works everywhere. I'm just trying to break it down for you. You can get a, an estimate to ship the car. If you find one a little further from where you live, you know, here's an estimate for $106, have the car shipped to my house. If you need a broker, if you need a broker, and some of you might need a broker. If you do, you can check out, there's AutoBidMaster right here. You can click right here to contact them. There's also eRepairables. Now I'm not promoting or recommending these companies. I've never used them. But if you need a broker in your state, feel free to use eRepairables or AutoBidMaster. They can handle everything from getting you live bidding to shipping your car. Like these companies can be a bid, big help to some of you guys that would otherwise require a dealer license to bid on cars. Now, if you have any questions about Copart, you can come over here to the support page. All right. And you can click on common questions and it will bring you to the page that we're on right now. All right. You can click on anything from searching vehicles, adding to the watch list, to joining auctions, placing bids, payment and pickup, the icons, you know, run and drive sellers, certified enhanced crash toys. Like you could go through all of this stuff right here. There's so much you can learn. And it's too much for me to cover in one video, but be sure to use this support button over here and click on common questions so that you can better understand how this stuff works. Now, when you click on dashboard, it's going to basically take you to the main page of your Copart account where you're going to see your current bids. You're going to see your watch list. You're going to see payments due. You're going to have saved searches. You've got your vehicle finder right here, which we already went over. You've got auctions. You can join auctions, today's auctions, bid status. These are your bids, lots won, lots lost, payments due, payment history, payment options, my account, your settings, document upload, prefate preference center, upgrades and deposits, your member fees. These are your Copart locations, services. You've got brokers right here under services. You can click on brokers, inspectors. This is another one. If you can't make it to the lot, you can click on inspectors and you can pay somebody in your market to come out and inspect a car for you. They can take pictures. They can start it. They can tell you everything that you're going to need to know to make an informed purchasing decision before you bid on the car. All right. Last but not least, copart.com, landing page, no license required. All right. This is where you find out if you can bid without a broker in your state. So green means you are good to go. No business license required. Yellow means there's a mix of licensing requirements, which could be the difference between being able to purchase clean title vehicles versus salvage. Gray, you must purchase with a valid license or through a broker. So here you go. This is just a real quick map. So you can see if your state is one that you need a broker. If it's one that you can freely bid on with no worries, or if it's one that, you know, you might have to have a broker. You may be able to buy clean titles, but not salvage cars. If you need a broker, you can always click find a broker and it will locate the nearest broker in your area or, or whatever. You got auto bid master right here, a better bid LLC, triple eight auto sales advantage, blah, blah, blah. You see what I mean? Lots and lots of options here. So that's going to be it. I know the video is a little rough. I apologize that it's a little rough around the edges, but I wanted to get all of the most important information out to you guys ASAP. And I know the video took a little longer than I wanted, but I hope that you found this video useful. I hope by watching this you understand a little bit better how to get Coparts set up and working for you. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. I'll do my best to help you out. Stay safe out there, everybody. And I look forward to seeing you all very soon in the next one.