It Took a Team of Excavators to Remove 85 Derelict Cars Near California Railroad Tracks

Oakland’s abandoned car problem turned a strip of land that separates a residential neighborhood from a railroad into a landfill. Officials asked a private company to clean it up, and a video posted on Instagram shows what it takes to get rid of about 85 dead, burnt, and mangled cars.

The strip of land is located in East Oakland, and local news outlets report that folks have been illegally dumping dead cars, scrap metal, and other trash on it for years. But while removing a mattress is pretty easy, getting rid of a GMT800-generation Chevy Tahoe that’s missing all of its wheels is a more difficult endeavor. It doesn’t help that the land belongs to three owners (Union Pacific, Caltrans, and Alameda County) and that multiple agencies are involved in the process of towing an abandoned car, including the California Highway Patrol and Oakland police.

California-based Joshua Grading rolled out heavy machinery to get rid of the 85 cars dumped on the strip of land one by one. Remember when you were three years old, making fake crashes with your Hot Wheels cars and cleaning them up? That’s kind of what this is—except the cars are real and someone is paying the folks driving the bulldozers. The task involves picking up the dead cars, which are sometimes difficult to access, and loading them onto a flatbed so that they can be taken to a junkyard. It sounds like the team is getting rid of most of the trash, too.

There’s a surprising percentage of trucks, vans, and SUVs in the pile, though we also spot lower-riding models like a Mustang and an Accord. Why they ended up beached between a residential neighborhood and a train track is a mystery. Some were likely sent there instead of junked, while others were seemingly stolen and dumped. Most are badly mangled and many are stripped, so it doesn’t look like there’s anything worth saving, but we know enthusiasts on the East Coast who would have loved to grab body panels from a California-owned GMT400 Silverado.

Got tips? Send ’em to tips@thedrive.com

The post It Took a Team of Excavators to Remove 85 Derelict Cars Near California Railroad Tracks appeared first on The Drive.