What 468,000 Copart US lots actually look like: damage, estimates and what still drives
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- salvagealert
This is our own catalogue rather than a survey: 468,240 distinct Copart US lots, deduped by lot number, as held on 21 September 2026. Every figure below is a query, and every limitation of the data is stated where it matters.
What the damage actually is
Primary damage, across every lot that carries one:
Primary damage Lots Front end 224,686 Rear end 69,538 Side 59,978 Minor dent / scratches 28,248 Mechanical 16,622 Normal wear 9,975 Water / flood 9,856 Hail 8,986 All over 8,759 Rollover 7,244 Undercarriage 5,395 Vandalism 5,203 Top / roof 4,785 Burn 4,615 Burn — engine 1,339 Stripped 1,163 Burn — interior 613 Frame damage 516 Front end is about half of everything. That single fact shapes the whole market: front-end parts are the ones in demand, front-end repair skill is the one that pays, and the competition on a clean front-end car is the fiercest competition there is. If your search is "front end only", you are searching the same half of the catalogue as everybody else.
The categories at the bottom are worth reading twice. Frame damage appears on 516 lots — not because frame damage is rare, but because it is rarely the primary damage. A rolled car with a bent rail is filed under Rollover. Do not use the primary-damage field to screen for structural damage; it will not find it.
The repair estimate against the car's value
For the 331,000-odd lots carrying both an estimated retail value and a damage estimate:
Primary damage Lots Avg. retail value Avg. damage estimate Estimate as % of value Front end 180,441 $15,017 $13,757 92% Side 47,478 $15,270 $13,848 91% Rear end 56,719 $14,581 $12,689 87% Top / roof 3,847 $18,425 $15,855 86% Water / flood 7,580 $17,528 $15,016 86% Undercarriage 3,955 $17,011 $14,112 83% Vandalism 3,715 $13,973 $11,129 80% Hail 7,419 $15,087 $11,956 79% Mechanical 3,190 $16,512 $10,415 63% Minor dent / scratches 3,916 $16,011 $8,796 55% All over 6,260 $18,821 $21,986 117% Rollover 5,656 $21,092 $24,313 115% Burn 3,420 $19,506 $23,185 119% This table is the total-loss calculation, visible. The estimate clusters between 80% and 92% of the vehicle's value for every ordinary damage type, because that is roughly where an insurer stops paying to repair. It is not a coincidence and it is not a coincidence that it sits just under 100%: the threshold is a percentage of value, it differs by state, and these cars are the ones that crossed it.
Three categories exceed 100%. Burn, rollover and all-over are cars where the shop's own estimate to repair is more than the car is worth. That does not automatically mean they are worthless to you — your labour is not billed at a body shop's rate and you are not buying new OEM panels — but it does mean the insurer's assessor looked at it and concluded there was nothing economic left. Going in against that judgement is a position that needs a reason.
Minor dent/scratches at 55% and mechanical at 63% are the interesting rows. Those are the cars where the estimate did not run away, and they are where a rebuild's margin actually lives. They are also, between them, only about 45,000 of 468,000 lots.
A caveat that matters: the damage estimate is an estimate. It is produced for the insurer's purposes, on the insurer's parts and labour assumptions, and it is not a quote you could get a shop to honour. Treat it as a signal about severity, which it is reliable at, rather than as a number to subtract from your budget.
What still drives
Copart records a drive status for 256,926 of the 468,240 lots — about 55%. The rest have nothing recorded, which is not the same as "does not drive" and must not be read that way.
Among the lots where a status is recorded, the share marked as driving:
Primary damage Lots with a status Marked as driving Hail 5,712 96.5% Rear end 46,131 93.6% Top / roof 2,712 93.3% Side 37,231 89.9% Minor dent / scratches 21,118 88.3% Vandalism 2,284 87.0% Front end 122,631 86.2% Normal wear 7,077 83.6% Water / flood 3,233 79.3% Undercarriage 2,906 70.4% All over 2,610 66.6% Rollover 1,979 62.7% Mechanical 9,319 61.4% Burn 685 53.1% Two things in that table are worth arguing with.
Front end at 86% is higher than most people expect, and it is the clearest evidence that the damage label describes where the impact was, not how bad it was. A car with a crushed bumper and a driving engine sits in the same bucket as one with the engine pushed into the firewall.
Water/flood at 79% is the most misleading number on this page. A flooded car very often drives — at the yard, on the day, briefly. That says almost nothing about whether it will drive in six months, and flood damage is the one category where "it runs" is close to worthless as information. The corrosion and the electronics are the problem, and neither shows up in a drive test.
The honest reading of the whole column is that a drive status is a weak signal everywhere and a misleading one for flood. It tells you the car moved under its own power at some point in the yard. It does not tell you the drivetrain is sound, and it never has.
What is not in these numbers
- No sale prices. Copart does not publish hammer prices in the feed we hold, so nothing here says what any of these cars sold for. Anyone quoting an average salvage sale price across a catalogue this size is quoting something they did not measure.
- Copart US only. IAA's catalogue uses a different damage vocabulary and is not directly comparable; mixing them would produce a number that describes neither.
- A snapshot. The catalogue turns over constantly. These are the lots held on the verified date, and the proportions are stable month to month while the absolute counts are not.
Re-running it
Every figure above is a group-by on the public catalogue, and the catalogue is at salvagealert.com/lots with the same filters. If a number here looks wrong to you against what you see in the lanes, say so in this thread — the query is reproducible and the disagreement is more interesting than the table.
Sources
- SalvageAlert public catalogue — the dataset these figures are computed from (official · 2026-09-21)
Verified 2026-09-21. Rates, fees and legal requirements change. Check the sources before acting on a number here.
#1(edited 2 times)
- Version from Sep 22, 2026, 1:39 AM
This is our own catalogue rather than a survey: 468,240 distinct Copart US lots, deduped by lot number, as held on 21 September 2026. Every figure below is a query, and every limitation of the data is stated where it matters.
What the damage actually is
Primary damage, across every lot that carries one:
Primary damage Lots Front end 224,686 Rear end 69,538 Side 59,978 Minor dent / scratches 28,248 Mechanical 16,622 Normal wear 9,975 Water / flood 9,856 Hail 8,986 All over 8,759 Rollover 7,244 Undercarriage 5,395 Vandalism 5,203 Top / roof 4,785 Burn 4,615 Burn — engine 1,339 Stripped 1,163 Burn — interior 613 Frame damage 516 Front end is about half of everything. That single fact shapes the whole market: front-end parts are the ones in demand, front-end repair skill is the one that pays, and the competition on a clean front-end car is the fiercest competition there is. If your search is "front end only", you are searching the same half of the catalogue as everybody else.
The categories at the bottom are worth reading twice. Frame damage appears on 516 lots — not because frame damage is rare, but because it is rarely the primary damage. A rolled car with a bent rail is filed under Rollover. Do not use the primary-damage field to screen for structural damage; it will not find it.
The repair estimate against the car's value
For the 331,000-odd lots carrying both an estimated retail value and a damage estimate:
Primary damage Lots Avg. retail value Avg. damage estimate Estimate as % of value Front end 180,441 $15,017 $13,757 92% Side 47,478 $15,270 $13,848 91% Rear end 56,719 $14,581 $12,689 87% Top / roof 3,847 $18,425 $15,855 86% Water / flood 7,580 $17,528 $15,016 86% Undercarriage 3,955 $17,011 $14,112 83% Vandalism 3,715 $13,973 $11,129 80% Hail 7,419 $15,087 $11,956 79% Mechanical 3,190 $16,512 $10,415 63% Minor dent / scratches 3,916 $16,011 $8,796 55% All over 6,260 $18,821 $21,986 117% Rollover 5,656 $21,092 $24,313 115% Burn 3,420 $19,506 $23,185 119% This table is the total-loss calculation, visible. The estimate clusters between 80% and 92% of the vehicle's value for every ordinary damage type, because that is roughly where an insurer stops paying to repair. It is not a coincidence and it is not a coincidence that it sits just under 100%: the threshold is a percentage of value, it differs by state, and these cars are the ones that crossed it.
Three categories exceed 100%. Burn, rollover and all-over are cars where the shop's own estimate to repair is more than the car is worth. That does not automatically mean they are worthless to you — your labour is not billed at a body shop's rate and you are not buying new OEM panels — but it does mean the insurer's assessor looked at it and concluded there was nothing economic left. Going in against that judgement is a position that needs a reason.
Minor dent/scratches at 55% and mechanical at 63% are the interesting rows. Those are the cars where the estimate did not run away, and they are where a rebuild's margin actually lives. They are also, between them, only about 45,000 of 468,000 lots.
A caveat that matters: the damage estimate is an estimate. It is produced for the insurer's purposes, on the insurer's parts and labour assumptions, and it is not a quote you could get a shop to honour. Treat it as a signal about severity, which it is reliable at, rather than as a number to subtract from your budget.
What still drives
Copart records a drive status for 256,926 of the 468,240 lots — about 55%. The rest have nothing recorded, which is not the same as "does not drive" and must not be read that way.
Among the lots where a status is recorded, the share marked as driving:
Primary damage Lots with a status Marked as driving Hail 5,712 96.5% Rear end 46,131 93.6% Top / roof 2,712 93.3% Side 37,231 89.9% Minor dent / scratches 21,118 88.3% Vandalism 2,284 87.0% Front end 122,631 86.2% Normal wear 7,077 83.6% Water / flood 3,233 79.3% Undercarriage 2,906 70.4% All over 2,610 66.6% Rollover 1,979 62.7% Mechanical 9,319 61.4% Burn 685 53.1% Two things in that table are worth arguing with.
Front end at 86% is higher than most people expect, and it is the clearest evidence that the damage label describes where the impact was, not how bad it was. A car with a crushed bumper and a driving engine sits in the same bucket as one with the engine pushed into the firewall.
Water/flood at 79% is the most misleading number on this page. A flooded car very often drives — at the yard, on the day, briefly. That says almost nothing about whether it will drive in six months, and flood damage is the one category where "it runs" is close to worthless as information. The corrosion and the electronics are the problem, and neither shows up in a drive test.
The honest reading of the whole column is that a drive status is a weak signal everywhere and a misleading one for flood. It tells you the car moved under its own power at some point in the yard. It does not tell you the drivetrain is sound, and it never has.
What is not in these numbers
- No sale prices. Copart does not publish hammer prices in the feed we hold, so nothing here says what any of these cars sold for. Anyone quoting an average salvage sale price across a catalogue this size is quoting something they did not measure.
- Copart US only. IAA's catalogue uses a different damage vocabulary and is not directly comparable; mixing them would produce a number that describes neither.
- A snapshot. The catalogue turns over constantly. These are the lots held on the verified date, and the proportions are stable month to month while the absolute counts are not.
Re-running it
Every figure above is a group-by on the public catalogue, and the catalogue is at salvagealert.com/lots with the same filters. If a number here looks wrong to you against what you see in the lanes, say so in this thread — the query is reproducible and the disagreement is more interesting than the table.
Sources
- SalvageAlert public catalogue — the dataset these figures are computed from (official · 2026-09-21)
Verified 2026-09-21. Rates, fees and legal requirements change. Check the sources before acting on a number here.
- Version from Sep 22, 2026, 12:27 AM
This is our own catalogue rather than a survey: 468,240 distinct Copart US lots, deduped by lot number, as held on 21 September 2026. Every figure below is a query, and every limitation of the data is stated where it matters.
What the damage actually is
Primary damage, across every lot that carries one:
Primary damage Lots Front end 224,686 Rear end 69,538 Side 59,978 Minor dent / scratches 28,248 Mechanical 16,622 Normal wear 9,975 Water / flood 9,856 Hail 8,986 All over 8,759 Rollover 7,244 Undercarriage 5,395 Vandalism 5,203 Top / roof 4,785 Burn 4,615 Burn — engine 1,339 Stripped 1,163 Burn — interior 613 Frame damage 516 Front end is about half of everything. That single fact shapes the whole market: front-end parts are the ones in demand, front-end repair skill is the one that pays, and the competition on a clean front-end car is the fiercest competition there is. If your search is "front end only", you are searching the same half of the catalogue as everybody else.
The categories at the bottom are worth reading twice. Frame damage appears on 516 lots — not because frame damage is rare, but because it is rarely the primary damage. A rolled car with a bent rail is filed under Rollover. Do not use the primary-damage field to screen for structural damage; it will not find it.
The repair estimate against the car's value
For the 331,000-odd lots carrying both an estimated retail value and a damage estimate:
Primary damage Lots Avg. retail value Avg. damage estimate Estimate as % of value Front end 180,441 $15,017 $13,757 92% Side 47,478 $15,270 $13,848 91% Rear end 56,719 $14,581 $12,689 87% Top / roof 3,847 $18,425 $15,855 86% Water / flood 7,580 $17,528 $15,016 86% Undercarriage 3,955 $17,011 $14,112 83% Vandalism 3,715 $13,973 $11,129 80% Hail 7,419 $15,087 $11,956 79% Mechanical 3,190 $16,512 $10,415 63% Minor dent / scratches 3,916 $16,011 $8,796 55% All over 6,260 $18,821 $21,986 117% Rollover 5,656 $21,092 $24,313 115% Burn 3,420 $19,506 $23,185 119% This table is the total-loss calculation, visible. The estimate clusters between 80% and 92% of the vehicle's value for every ordinary damage type, because that is roughly where an insurer stops paying to repair. It is not a coincidence and it is not a coincidence that it sits just under 100%: the threshold is a percentage of value, it differs by state, and these cars are the ones that crossed it.
Three categories exceed 100%. Burn, rollover and all-over are cars where the shop's own estimate to repair is more than the car is worth. That does not automatically mean they are worthless to you — your labour is not billed at a body shop's rate and you are not buying new OEM panels — but it does mean the insurer's assessor looked at it and concluded there was nothing economic left. Going in against that judgement is a position that needs a reason.
Minor dent/scratches at 55% and mechanical at 63% are the interesting rows. Those are the cars where the estimate did not run away, and they are where a rebuild's margin actually lives. They are also, between them, only about 45,000 of 468,000 lots.
A caveat that matters: the damage estimate is an estimate. It is produced for the insurer's purposes, on the insurer's parts and labour assumptions, and it is not a quote you could get a shop to honour. Treat it as a signal about severity, which it is reliable at, rather than as a number to subtract from your budget.
What still drives
Copart records a drive status for 256,926 of the 468,240 lots — about 55%. The rest have nothing recorded, which is not the same as "does not drive" and must not be read that way.
Among the lots where a status is recorded, the share marked as driving:
Primary damage Lots with a status Marked as driving Hail 5,712 96.5% Rear end 46,131 93.6% Top / roof 2,712 93.3% Side 37,231 89.9% Minor dent / scratches 21,118 88.3% Vandalism 2,284 87.0% Front end 122,631 86.2% Normal wear 7,077 83.6% Water / flood 3,233 79.3% Undercarriage 2,906 70.4% All over 2,610 66.6% Rollover 1,979 62.7% Mechanical 9,319 61.4% Burn 685 53.1% Two things in that table are worth arguing with.
Front end at 86% is higher than most people expect, and it is the clearest evidence that the damage label describes where the impact was, not how bad it was. A car with a crushed bumper and a driving engine sits in the same bucket as one with the engine pushed into the firewall.
Water/flood at 79% is the most misleading number on this page. A flooded car very often drives — at the yard, on the day, briefly. That says almost nothing about whether it will drive in six months, and flood damage is the one category where "it runs" is close to worthless as information. The corrosion and the electronics are the problem, and neither shows up in a drive test.
The honest reading of the whole column is that a drive status is a weak signal everywhere and a misleading one for flood. It tells you the car moved under its own power at some point in the yard. It does not tell you the drivetrain is sound, and it never has.
What is not in these numbers
- No sale prices. Copart does not publish hammer prices in the feed we hold, so nothing here says what any of these cars sold for. Anyone quoting an average salvage sale price across a catalogue this size is quoting something they did not measure.
- Copart US only. IAA's catalogue uses a different damage vocabulary and is not directly comparable; mixing them would produce a number that describes neither.
- A snapshot. The catalogue turns over constantly. These are the lots held on the verified date, and the proportions are stable month to month while the absolute counts are not.
Re-running it
Every figure above is a group-by on the public catalogue, and the catalogue is at salvagealert.com/lots with the same filters. If a number here looks wrong to you against what you see in the lanes, say so in this thread — the query is reproducible and the disagreement is more interesting than the table.
Sources
- SalvageAlert public catalogue — the dataset these figures are computed from (official · 2026-09-21)
Verified 2026-09-21. Rates, fees and legal requirements change. Check the sources before acting on a number here.