Seven in ten Chicago homes are in buildings with two or more units, and only about a quarter are detached houses (Census Bureau, ACS 2020 to 2024). So a city pickup rarely starts in a long private driveway. The car is more often at the curb, in a garage that opens onto an alley, or in a building’s parking lot. Junk My Car Inc handles all three anywhere inside city limits, and this page covers the city rules that set how long a dead car can stay put.
Section 9-80-110: when the city calls a car abandoned
The Municipal Code treats two kinds of problem car differently. Under subsection (a), a car on the public way counts as abandoned if it can’t be driven in its present state, or if it hasn’t moved for seven days in a row and looks deserted.
Subsection (b) goes further. A hazardous dilapidated vehicle in full view can be ticketed and towed at once by police or Streets and Sanitation, and that reaches cars on private property too. The exceptions are narrow: a car kept inside a building, an inoperable historic vehicle at least 25 years old, or one at a wrecking or junk business. Subsection (d) then puts the tow and storage bill on the last registered owner.
Neighbors use this. The city logged 32,151 abandoned-vehicle requests through 311 in 2018 alone.
Alleys, and why the truck usually comes in the back
Chicago has about 1,900 miles of public alleys, and many two-flats and three-flats keep their garages on them. Section 9-64-130 allows a vehicle to stand in an alley only while it is being loaded or unloaded, with at least 10 feet left open and nobody’s property blocked. Putting a car onto a flatbed is exactly that kind of short stop, which is why most alley pickups are simple.
What doesn’t work is rolling the car out into the alley the night before and leaving it. Keep it in the garage or on the parking pad, tell us which side of the block it’s on, and the driver takes it from there.
Winter ban, snow routes, sweeping and permit blocks
From December 1 to April 1, signed main streets turn into tow zones from 3 to 7 a.m. with or without snow (§ 9-64-060). Streets posted as “Snow Route” go off-limits once more than 2 inches is down, until the plows are done (§ 9-64-070). From April through November, street-sweeping signs clear a block for the day (§ 9-64-040), and on the city’s 1,942 residential permit zones the curb is kept for cars carrying that zone’s permit (§ 9-64-090).
A running car just moves when the sign goes up. A dead one collects tickets or a tow. Then there’s the city sticker: residents need the wheel tax license to use a vehicle on the public way (§ 3-56-020), and renewing it for a car that will never start again is money gone.
Getting it sold, and the suburbs on the city line
We buy junk cars in Chicago in any condition, with or without keys. Fill in the quote form and expect a call back within 15 minutes, any day from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The offer has no expiry date, the tow costs you nothing, and the driver pays you once the car is on the truck, in cash or through Zelle, Cash App or a similar app. Two or three cars on one block can go together.
If the title is missing, list what you do have: registration, a bill of sale, an insurance card. Which of those count for a scrap sale is set by Illinois rules, and we’ll tell you before anyone drives out. Our guide on who buys junk cars without a title has the longer version.
The suburbs along the city line have their own rules and their own pages: Oak Park and Cicero to the west, Evergreen Park to the southwest and Calumet City to the southeast. Every town we serve is on one map.