Hurricane Ian Prompts a Question: How Many Totaled Vehicles Return to the Road?

Hurricane Ian caused widespread flooding across Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina in October, resulting in losses estimated at between $41 billion and $70 billion. Among those losses were up to 358,000 vehicles damaged by floodwaters, according to Carfax.

As the vehicles are declared total losses and proceed to auction, there’s a good chance that a significant number of them will take to the road again, adding to a global reclamation fleet that includes uncounted vehicles damaged in collisions.

Through the end of the quarter, Copart, the dominant company in the late model vehicle auction space, received nearly 70,000 vehicles damaged in Hurricane Ian, Copart co-CEO Jeff Liaw said during a Q1 2023 earnings call on Nov. 16.

How many of those vehicles will take to the road again, rather than being recycled? On average, approximately 20%, according to a figure provided by Liaw during a previous earnings call.

‘Our retrieval and storage of vehicles, title processing, and online marketplace are essential to the reuse, harvesting, and recycling of literally millions of cars per year,’ Liaw said during the Sept. 8 call.