The Salvage Yard is a new business introduced in the latest GTA Online update, offering players an exciting opportunity to partner with Yusuf Amir and his cousin Jamal. This semi-passive business allows you to earn money through tow truck services and a series of robberies targeting high-value vehicles.
Key features of the Salvage Yard business:
- Tow truck services: Source vehicles and deliver them to your Salvage Yard for salvaging, earning between $30,000 and $40,000 per vehicle.
- Passive income: As you source more vehicles, your Salvage Yard’s passive income increases, with deposits made to your safe every 48 minutes in real-time.
- Robberies: Engage in a series of preparatory missions leading up to the ultimate heist targeting high-value vehicles, with the potential to earn up to $405,000 per robbery (plus an additional $50,000 for completing bonus challenges).
We’ll provide step-by-step instructions on how to purchase and set up your Salvage Yard, optimize your earnings through strategic upgrades, and successfully complete the various robberies. By following our tips and advice, you’ll be well on your way to running a profitable Salvage Yard business in GTA Online.
How to purchase the Salvage Yard
When you log into the game’s free roam, Yusuf Amir will give you a call, telling you about the new Salvage Yard and expressing his interest in partnering with you. After the call, you can purchase a Salvage Yard from the Maze Banks Foreclosure website.
There are five locations to choose from when purchasing the Salvage Yard. Three of them are situated in the city, and the remaining two are located in the Paleto Bay region up north. We suggest going for the one in the heart of the city, the Strawberry Salvage Yard location, and there are a couple of reasons for this choice.
The Strawberry Salvage Yard stands out as our top choice due to its central city placement. Its convenient connection to the main road’s central intersection and the highway makes completing your robbery prep missions much smoother. Most of your two truck missions will also be in the city, allowing you to complete them quickly.
If you find yourself with a tow truck mission far up north on the map, there’s a workaround too. Set your ‘last spawn location’ as the Salvage Yard and then switch to a new session or an invite-only session — these missions are possible in all session types. After this, you’ll spawn in your Salvage Yard, and you can get into your tow truck to restart the mission.
Most locations are within the city, with only one or two instances requiring travel to the Paleto Bay region.
The initial cost of the Strawberry Salvage Yard stands at $2,570,000. However, if you decide to go for all the upgrades, the total investment in the Salvage Yard will be $5,570,000.
Once you’ve acquired your Salvage Yard (and remember, you can only purchase one), you’ll find it on the map, ready for you to dive into robberies and tow truck missions. Unlike other businesses, there are no setup missions for the Salvage Yard business.
When you enter your Salvage Yard for the first time, you will get a cutscene of Yusuf Amir greeting you.
Salvage Yard upgrades
Fortunately, you don’t have to buy everything for your Salvage Yard. Here are the essential upgrades that will optimize the returns from this semi-passive business.
Getting tints for your Salvage Yard is entirely up to your aesthetic preference. It’s a cosmetic add-on that costs around $75,000.
As for trade rates, they’re optional and not crucial for your tow truck business. However, they can be advantageous for long-term savings, offering discounts on claiming vehicles from Mors Mutuals and repairing your vehicle at LS Customs. Trade rates costs $450,000.
To activate tow truck services, you need to purchase a tow truck. There are two types available: the tow truck beater, priced at around $650,000, and the regular clean tow truck, which costs $1,100,000. It’s worth noting that this choice is purely aesthetic, and it’s recommended to opt for the more affordable version unless you have extra funds to spare.
Another significant purchase is the wall safe, priced at $750,000. Note that this can always be bought later on, and we suggest skipping it for now if funds are tight. The wall safe increases your safe’s money-holding capacity from $100,000 to $250,000, and initially, your Salvage Yard business may not generate that much unless you’ve towed a substantial amount or are solely dedicated to this business.
The staff costs are $625,000 and are essential for the tow truck business. The staff upgrade is very important as it reduces the salvage time for a single vehicle from 96 minutes to 48 minutes. Further details on this are provided below.
Best Salvage Yard upgrades
On top of covering the base cost of the Salvage Yard, you need to invest in both the tow truck and the staff upgrade to get started. This is the bare minimum requirement.
Salvage Yard location costs
Here are the prices for all the Salvage Yards available in GTA Online:
- Paleto Bay: $1,620,000
- Sandy Shores: $2,030,000
- Murrieta Heights: $2,420,000
- Strawberry: $2,570,000 (recommended best location)
- La Puerta: $2,690,000
Tow Truck Services
To understand the tow truck business, it is best to first understand how your tow truck vehicle capacity functions, and its restrictions.
There’s no set limit on how many vehicles you can bring to your Salvage Yard, but you’re constrained by the salvage time. When you source a vehicle, it takes 96 minutes to salvage a single vehicle without the staff upgrade. You can bring up to two vehicles into your salvage yard garage simultaneously.
However, both vehicles initiate their 96-minute timer once delivered and salvage work starts, and each vehicle’s timer operates independently. Acquiring the staff upgrade reduces the salvage time to 48 minutes, as mentioned earlier.
To start the tow truck mission, head to your parked tow truck within the Salvage Yard and hop inside. Once you’re in, you’ll see a prompt giving you the option to either launch the tow truck service or respray the tow truck.
Upon starting the mission, you’ll find yourself outside the Salvage Yard in your tow truck. Your objective is to drive to the vehicle highlighted by Jamal and return it to the Salvage Yard.
Sometimes, you may attract a 2-star wanted level. While you can’t use Lester’s services to shake off the cops, you can evade them by either causing your own demise or letting the police handle it.
This goes without saying, but assuming you end yourself using explosives, keep a safe distance between the tow truck and the vehicle you’re recovering, to prevent mission failure!
After delivering the vehicle to the Salvage Yard, your staff will start salvaging it. If you’ve purchased the staff upgrade, this process should take 48 minutes. While your staff are occupied with the first vehicle, you’re free to proceed with your next tow truck mission and retrieve the second vehicle.
Tow truck payout
You can make anywhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per salvage. While some cars have reportedly fetched players $50,000 to $60,000, these instances are rare. In most cases, you should anticipate earning between $30,000 and $40,000 per car. You get this amount as soon as 48 minutes have passed.
Maximizing your Salvage Yard profit
On top of the tow truck services work described above, your Salvage Yard can also earn you passive income, much like the Nightclub business. Just as the Nightclub’s popularity system raises passive income in the safe, with each new vehicle that you source with your tow truck, your Salvage Yard gets an increase in its passive income.
Unfortunately, there’s no direct method to monitor your hourly earnings; it’s more of an intuitive thing, unless Rockstar Games decides to include a maximum earnings progress bar similar to the Nightlcub’s Popularity bar. The Salvage Yard safe receives a deposit every in-game day, translating to approximately 48 minutes in real time.
You increase the amount that gets deposited into your safe every 48 minutes by sourcing cars via the tow truck services, and you can increase this regular, 48 minute deposit amount to a maximum of $24,000 each time by sourcing four cars. The following table shows you how much you can make for sourcing four cars.
Now, you might be curious about how this is feasible, given the 48-minute salvage time. How can you source four vehicles consecutively to maximize the profits in the safe?
Don’t worry, Rockstar Games has provided some leeway here before the “popularity” or the deposit amount starts to decline. Once you’ve acquired one car and the deposit amount has risen to $7,200, you have 96 minutes real-life time before it drops to $4,800. 96 minutes translates to 1.6 hours in real time, which is just over one hour and thirty minutes.
So, fortunately, you’ll have more than enough time to tow and salvage another vehicle before that timer runs out. Similarly, once you’ve salvaged your first car (after 48 minutes have passed, with the staff upgrade) and your second car enters salvaging, quickly start another tow truck mission and retrieve the third car. Finally, once the second car has finished salvaging, you can acquire your fourth car. You can repeat this process to achieve the maximum $24,000 deposit amount.
The decrease in the amount is the reason we included the other deposit amounts in the table above. The non-highlighted numbers represent the amounts you receive as your 1.6 hours pass by. For instance, if you’ve already acquired all four vehicles and have not obtained another within 1.6 hours, the amount deposited to your safe every 48 real-life minutes will reduce to $21,000 (down from the maximum $24,000). And if you do not tow a vehicle for another 1.6 hours, it will decrease to $19,200, which is equivalent to the amount you get for towing three cars.
Salvage Yard robberies
The tow truck service is just one aspect of the Salvage Yard. The real money-making method is the robberies that you do in partnership with Yusuf Amir and his cousin Jamal Amir. These new robberies entail a sequence of preparatory missions leading up to the ultimate heist targeting a high-value vehicle.
There are a total of five robberies and you get three random robberies that you can do each week. From the robberies, you can earn a minimum of $260,000 (for The Gangbanger Robbery) through to a maximum of $405,000 (for The Podium Robbery). Additionally, you have the chance to earn an extra $50,000 by successfully completing the bonus challenges for each robbery.
Check our complete guides on how to complete each robbery with bonus challenges:
- The Gangbanger Robbery
- The McTony Robbery
- The Duggan Robbery
- The Podium Robbery
- The Cargo Ship Robbery
Is it worth purchasing the Salvage Yard?
For GTA Online newcomers, we suggest holding off on acquiring the Salvage Yard. There are more lucrative money-making methods to explore first. Utilize other businesses like the Nightclub business, Hangar business or even Agency missions to build a solid financial foundation before diving into the salvage yard business. Check out our best money making methods, including the Cayo Perico heist method which is great for solo players.
On the other hand, if you’re a seasoned player with well-established businesses in GTA Online, adding the Salvage Yard is a viable option for an additional income stream, and of course, some fresh gameplay and things to do!
