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Once you get in an accident, the vehicle must be inspected by the insurance company. In many occasions, insurance companies have “approved” body shops write estimates for vehicle damages. Most of the time if your vehicle is a total loss, then the vehicle must be towed out of the scene of the accident into a body shop.
If your car ends up in a “approved” body shop, they will write an estimate and send it to your claim adjuster. Depending on the cost of repairing the vehicle the total loss threshold warning will tip off the insurance company. The total loss process starts at that point.
In other accidents, vehicles might be towed to a yard, or garage, or they are left in the insured’s house.
The total loss process will not begin until you talk to your insurance company, usually in a recorded statement. The adjuster will be asking questions about the accident and about the car. Most of this information will be used later in the evaluation of the vehicle.
The adjuster will asses how damaged is the vehicle. Questions like, was there any smoke? Was the windshield broken? Is the vehicle drivable? Was there any leaking from the engine? And if there is a lease or a loan in the car? The claim adjusters will asses depending on how many miles and the year of your car if the total loss process starts.
If the total loss process starts, then the insurance adjuster will have the vehicle towed to a salvage yard. The most known and used salvage yard across the US is COPART.
When your vehicle is going to be pick up, you need to leave the keys with the car. You also need to take all your personal belongings of the car.
For more Total Loss information and negotiation strategy, check out this eBook.
If you leave anything behind, you are going to have to find out where exactly the car is at (could be more than 40 miles) and go to pick up your stuff, so make sure you have everything you need out of it.
The registered owner of the vehicle must be present at the time of pick up, or that person needs to call COPART in advance and give permission for them to tow the vehicle away. COPART and other companies will not pick up the car unless you give them authorization.
If the vehicle is moved to the salvage yard or it is still at the body shop. The field rep or the total loss adjuster must inspect the vehicle. The fact that the vehicle is going to a salvage yard does not mean that the car is a total loss. It must be inspected by the insurance company. The same applies to body shops.
Body shops are on the business of fixing cars, so they have a vested interest on “fixing” the car. The insurance adjuster wants to make sure that the body shop will not fix vehicles that are total losses. If the car is a total loss, then the car will be moved from the body shop to the salvage yard.
Towing a total loss vehicle out of your house, the street, takes an average time of one day.
Having the insurance adjuster inspect takes an average of three days. This varies depending on the season, winter time takes longer for towing and the inspection of the adjuster.
Once the adjuster reaches the vehicle, it can take up two weeks to determine whether the vehicle is or is not a total loss.
Why so long? The adjuster will be doing some background work. They will determine if your vehicle had prior damage so they can deduct from their offer, they will also run a vehicle history report, just to make sure your vehicle was not prior before. If it was, then they would only pay what they think the salvage of the car will be.
They will also do a preliminary search for what they believe the value of your car is. Depending on how exotic your car is, this will increase the time of the total loss process.
Read Part 2 of the total loss process more information.
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