Salvage Yard in GTA Online: what to buy, how to steal the cars and what it makes per week

Data checked on November 6, 2026, after update 1.73.

The Salvage Yard is a business operating as Red's Auto Parts. In reality it's a front for stealing high-end cars ordered by Yusuf Amir and his cousin Jamal. You pick robberies on the Planning Wall inside the Salvage Yard itself.

To buy a property, take Yusuf's call and open the Maze Bank Foreclosures website. To launch robberies you must be registered as a VIP, CEO or MC President. A bonus from Rockstar: completing actions in these robberies unlocks the Vapid Stanier LE Cruiser, Police Riot and Unmarked Cruiser police vehicles at Trade Price.

The figures in this guide come from the wiki and from guides by GTA Boss, GTABase, GTA Boom and GTA Intel. Rockstar doesn't publish payout tables for the cars, the tow truck or the safe. Other businesses are covered on our GTA Online businesses page.

These are base prices without discounts. The location doesn't affect payouts, only the distance to targets and to the Terminal at the docks, where cars are delivered for sale. That's why guides recommend Strawberry or La Puerta. Upkeep, according to GTABase, is GTA$250 per in-game day.

A fully upgraded Salvage Yard, property included, costs ≈5.57M–5.69M. For solo play, the Tow Truck Beater (450,000 cheaper than the regular tow truck) and Staff are enough. The minimum working setup is Strawberry + Tow Truck Beater + Staff = GTA$3,845,000. Get the Wall Safe once you have spare cash: without it the safe fills up quickly. Trade Rates and the color don't affect income.

Every robbery follows the same pattern: Scope Out → three Planning Work missions, one of which is an optional "Disrupt…" → two or three required Robbery Tasks plus optional masks → the finale. You can play with one to four players, and all five can be done solo. When you repeat the same robbery, you don't need to scope it out again.

Every robbery also has an optional Masks task. The prep lists follow GTA Wiki (for The Cargo Ship they match GTABase). Rockstar warns that the Disrupt missions have a tight timer and suggests bringing friends or a Buzzard. Solo, you can skip them.

The Claim option was added in March 2024. A claimed car comes with a special license plate (for example, LS Pounders or Liberty City). A claimable car isn't available every week.

You can hold up to four stolen cars and sell them together, but each one needs its own driver from your organization. Solo, sell them one at a time.

Don't trust lists that promise 0.8M–3.4M per robbery. Those are the dealership prices of the same cars, not Yusuf's payout. The real extra money comes from Bonus Challenges. Each robbery has three, worth GTA$10,000 each, plus another 20,000 for completing all three. That's up to 50,000 for every robbery, not just once (GTA Intel, GTA Boom, GameRant). For example, in The Duggan, per GameRant: more than 15 headshots, disable the target on the first attempt, reach Hao within a minute.

Separately, there are one-time awards, also worth 50,000 each: for the first completion of The Duggan, The Cargo Ship and The Gangbanger as leader, and for completing every challenge of one robbery (Perfect Run). According to GTA Wiki, these are paid only once. That's where the confusion comes from: GTA Boss describes the 50,000 as a one-time payout.

Rockstar states plainly that the board shows three cars to steal each week. Each can be stolen once, so the maximum is three robberies per week. Sources don't mention a separate timer between them.

• Each week 3 of the 5 robbery types are active; the lineup and the cars change with the Thursday update.
• Cars come in three tiers: cheap (≈245K–270K), mid (≈330K–360K) and expensive (≈380K–410K).
• The payout depends on the car, not the robbery: The Gangbanger can come with a cheap car or an expensive one.

Targets and bonuses change every Thursday; the current ones are in our weekly update.

To start the Tow Truck Service, get into the tow truck at the Salvage Yard and pick the service from the menu. You tow a marked abandoned car and bring it to the property, where it gets salvaged.

• Per tow truck car: ≈30K–40K after salvaging, occasionally more. You can't sell or keep it.
• Salvaging takes 96 minutes without Staff and 48 with Staff. Two cars fit on the lifts at once, and the process runs even while you're offline.
• Wanted level must be cleared before delivery.
• The safe fills once per in-game day (48 minutes). The amount depends on the property's reputation, and every tow job raises it: roughly four tow jobs in a row get you to the maximum, GTA$24,000 per day (per GTA Wiki, that's with Staff; without it, 20,000).
• Without new tow jobs the reputation drops, so after that one or two between other activities is enough.

At the maximum, the safe makes ≈30K per hour. Without the Wall Safe it fills to about 100K, with the upgrade to 250K, which is ≈8 hours of real time. Since the Bottom Dollar Bounties update (June 2024) there's a short cooldown between tow truck missions.

GTA Intel rates the robberies at 500K–700K per hour, while a simple "payout / time" calculation comes closer to 300K–400K. GTA Boss gives no hourly figure and calls the Salvage Yard a steady weekly income rather than an endless grind. By its estimate, the Strawberry property pays for itself in 7–11 sales.

Update 1.73 (July 14, 2026) cut payouts for Cayo Perico, the Diamond Casino and other heists, but the Salvage Yard isn't on that list. So after July it became relatively more profitable. For comparison: the Pink Diamond in Cayo Perico now pays 910K instead of 1.3M, the first sale of the week in the Kortz Center pays 1.2M–1.9M, and the Diamond Casino Heist pays 1.48M–2.3M for the whole crew. How to combine it with other income sources is covered in our guide on how to make money in GTA Online.

• Do the Bonus Challenges: up to 50,000 extra on every robbery.
• Start with the expensive car: it pays ≈380K–410K versus ≈250K for the cheap one.
• An invite-only session lowers the risk during delivery.
• Tow jobs between activities: four in a row, then one or two to keep the reputation up.
• Alternate the three weekly cars with other heists: Kortz Center, Cayo Perico solo, and the businesses from our best solo businesses list.

Rockstar patches target-holding and car duplication glitches server-side, and mod menus can get you banned. We don't publish such methods.