How To Get A Car Title For Export

Dealing with Import and Export Brokers
We deal with a lot of import and export brokers for cars and motor vehicles, and a lot of times they’re frustrated with all the paperwork you have to do to export a vehicle. You might be thinking, “Why is there paperwork to export a vehicle? I thought Customs was only concerned about importing and cars coming into the country?”

Well, that’s true for the most part. I mean, if you’re importing a container full of bananas, they want to make sure there are no spiders in it or snakes or disease. If you’re exporting bananas, they really don’t care. But vehicles are different because when you export a vehicle, you might also be causing harm if it’s a stolen vehicle or has liens on it.

Scrutiny of Motor Vehicles in the Export Process

• So, motor vehicles are one exception in the export process where that type of commodity is scrutinized more by CBP (Customs and Border Protection), and the reason they do it is to make sure that stolen vehicles aren’t leaving the country—and many times they are.

• It used to be that if you stole a vehicle, you could either change the VIN number and drive it around. Well, that can’t be done anymore; they changed those laws back in the ’70s and ’80s. Or you could do a chop shop and just sell off all the parts. Well, they changed those laws in the ’90s and 2000s where now parts are tracked.

• So now when people steal vehicles, what they do is ship them overseas to another country and put them in a container. They put a bunch of stuff around it—maybe mattresses or furniture or who knows what—to try to hide it.

The Smuggling of Stolen Cars
The key to these smugglers smuggling cars is that you can send it to Africa, Europe, or South America, and now you have a car that you can sell for full value because they’re not going to really check the stolen records.

This is the reason why paperwork is a little more tricky to export vehicles now—because they’re making sure cars that are stolen or that have liens on them aren’t going out. A lot of times people will buy a car under a straw buyer name at a dealership with a lien on it, so they don’t really pay any money for the car. Maybe they pay a $500 down payment, they get a loan for the car, and then they export it overseas. They stop paying the loan and they have a free car in another country.

Increased Scrutiny and Paperwork for Export Vehicles
So, the crackdown is making it harder to do paperwork for export vehicles. A lot of the cars that come out of Copart or IAAI have “export only” on them. A lot of export brokers are now having to do more title work because of the vehicle’s scrutiny of being hidden in shipping containers, and they will X-ray these containers. If they see it looks like there’s a vehicle in it, they’ll pop that thing open and make sure that it’s been declared properly with the right VIN number.

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