Vehicle recycler's license
To obtain a vehicle recycler’s license, you must have a place of business where you maintain regular business hours and the public can contact you. Regular business hours are a minimum of 32 hours, Monday through Friday, where the office is staffed during these hours. Your place of business must include an office, be equipped with a telephone, and comply with local zoning and ordinance requirements.
If the business stores, keeps, buys or sells 10 or more wrecked, scrapped, ruined, dismantled or inoperative vehicles, you must comply with the Iowa Junkyard Control Law, Chapter 306C.2 of the code. The law prohibits junkyards within 1,000 feet of the nearest edge of any interstate or primary highway, except those which are:
- Effectively screened by natural objects, plantings, fences or other means approved by the Iowa DOT.
- Located in industrial zones or unzoned industrial areas.
- Not visible from the main traveled portion of the highway.
- Established prior to July 1, 1972.
Vehicle rebuilders must certify that at their location there is a 14-foot by 24-foot (inside measurement) area in a building for rebuilding and restoring vehicles, sufficient storage for all vehicles in the inventory and equipment necessary to perform rebuilding and restoring of vehicles in the inventory.
Used vehicle parts recyclers must certify that at their location there is sufficient storage for the vehicle parts in the inventory.
Vehicle salvager must certify that there is sufficient storage for vehicles, vehicle parts and vehicle bodies included in the inventory; and that there is sufficient equipment necessary to perform dismantling, scrapping or storing of vehicles and/or vehicle parts included in the inventory.
The license fee is $70. Any supplemental location within the same county at which business is conducted is referred to as an extension. There is no additional license fee for an extension, but any extension address must be listed when applying. Selling rebuilt vehicles at retail will require a motor vehicle dealer’s license. A recycler’s license does not authorize selling vehicles at retail.