GTA Online Chop Shop Guide: Salvage Yard, Car Robberies and Payouts Explained

The Chop Shop turned the Salvage Yard into one of the most reliable ways to make money in GTA Online: buy the property, steal specific cars for Liberty City mogul Yusuf Amir, then cash them out for up to $500,000 a job. Here is exactly how the business works, what it costs to set up, and how much each part of it pays.

GTA Online Chop Shop at a Glance

• Released: December 12, 2023, as a free update for every platform
• Property: a Salvage Yard (fronted as Red's Auto Parts), five locations priced from $1,620,000 to $2,690,000
• Main income: Salvage Yard Robberies, five heist-style jobs that rotate three at a time and pay $300,000-$500,000 each
• Side income: the Tow Truck service, $30,000-$60,000 per random car scrapped for parts
• Requirement: you need to be registered as a CEO or MC President to run robberies from the Planning Wall

What Is the Chop Shop Update?

The Chop Shop update added a new criminal front to GTA Online: the Salvage Yard, run under the name Red's Auto Parts. On paper it is a scrapyard business that buys wrecked cars and sells the parts. In practice it is a partnership with Yusuf Amir, the Liberty City real estate mogul and car collector first introduced in The Contract, and his cousin Jamal.

Yusuf keeps a rotating shopping list of high-value vehicles he wants for his private collection. Your job is to steal them. Every robbery in the Chop Shop revolves around one target car, planned and executed out of your Salvage Yard's Planning Wall and computer, in missions structured like scaled-down heists: scope out the target, run prep missions or Freemode Tasks to reduce resistance, then pull off a finale to grab the car and get it home clean.

Alongside the robberies, the Salvage Yard runs a slower, passive Tow Truck service that lets you scrap random street vehicles for smaller, steadier cash.

Buying a Salvage Yard: All 5 Locations and Prices

You buy a Salvage Yard from the Maze Bank Foreclosures website after Yusuf calls with the pitch. Five properties are available, and the price only changes the location, not what the business does - pick whichever cuts down your drive time to jobs you already do often.

Location	Price
Paleto Bay	$1,620,000
Sandy Shores	$2,030,000
Murrieta Heights	$2,420,000
Strawberry	$2,570,000
La Puerta	$2,690,000

Paleto Bay is the cheapest entry point if you are just testing the business. La Puerta and Strawberry sit closer to central Los Santos, which matters more once you are running robberies daily and want shorter drives between the Planning Wall and your targets.

Salvage Yard Upgrades: What's Worth Buying

The base property runs the business, but four upgrades change how fast and how comfortably you can grind it. A fully loaded Salvage Yard, on top of the most expensive property, runs about $5,690,000 total.

Upgrade	Cost	What it does
Tow Truck	$1,100,000 (or $650,000 for the Beater version)	Required to run the passive scrapping side hustle; both versions perform identically
Staff	$625,000	Cuts Tow Truck payout time from two in-game days to one
Wall Safe	$750,000	Lets cash accumulate on-site instead of only depositing through the interaction menu
Trade Price	$450,000	Unlocks discounted trade prices on select vehicles
Vehicle tints	Free (gray) or $75,000 each	Cosmetic paint options for the Salvage Yard's own fleet

If you only buy one upgrade, make it the Tow Truck (either version works, so the cheaper Beater is the efficient pick) - it is the only way to access the secondary income stream at all. Staff is the next best buy once you are running the business regularly, since it doubles how often Tow Truck payouts land.

How Salvage Yard Robberies Work

Every Chop Shop robbery follows the same rough shape:

1. Scope it out. A short scouting step shows you where the target car currently is and what's guarding it.
2. Run the preps. Each robbery has a mix of mandatory setup missions and optional Freemode Tasks. Mandatory preps unlock the gear you need for the finale; optional tasks thin out the enemies or hazards you'll face, similar to the strangers-and-freaks-style setup missions in older heists.
3. Pull the finale. A high-speed sequence where you actually steal the target vehicle and drive, fly or ship it back to your Salvage Yard before the cops catch up.
4. Cash out. Once the car is home, sell it to Yusuf for the full payout, or salvage it for parts instead.

Only three of the five robberies are available in any given week, and Rockstar rotates which three on the weekly schedule alongside other GTA Online content. If the job you want isn't listed, it will cycle back in eventually.

The 5 Chop Shop Robbery Targets

Each robbery is themed around a different location and target car:

• The Duggan Robbery - steal a car straight out of a private Maze Bank-sponsored Arena War event.
• The Cargo Ship Robbery - recover a vehicle being smuggled aboard the La'oub Princess cargo ship.
• The Podium Robbery - lift a prototype car from the Diamond Casino's podium display, the same spinning-prize spot from the Diamond Casino Heist.
• The Gangbanger Robbery - spring a gang member from custody and track down the car he was hiding.
• The McTony Robbery - break into a billionaire's private submarine to grab his prized ride.

Each one plays differently, but all five fit the same two-hours-or-less loop once you know the preps, which is what makes the business easy to slot into a normal solo session alongside other earners like the Cayo Perico Heist.

How Much Do Chop Shop Robberies Pay?

Selling a stolen car to Yusuf pays between $300,000 and $500,000, depending on the robbery, minus a roughly $20,000 prep cost that goes toward gear and vehicles used during the setup. On top of the base payout, each robbery also has up to $50,000 in optional bonus challenges - beating a time limit, avoiding damage, that kind of thing - for players who want to push for the full reward.

Run efficiently, a single robbery from scoping to cash-in takes about two hours or less the first few times, and considerably less once you have the routes and preps memorized. That puts Chop Shop robberies comfortably in line with GTA Online's better heist-tier payouts per hour, without needing a full four-player crew - most robberies scale fine solo or in a small group.

Sell to Yusuf or Keep the Car?

At the finale of each robbery you get a choice: hand the car straight to Yusuf for the full cash payout, or salvage it for parts instead of a full sale. Selling to Yusuf is the more profitable option almost every time and is the default play if your goal is straightforward income. Salvaging matters more if you're chasing a specific in-game collectible or want the resource itself rather than the cash - most players running the business purely for money should sell.

The Tow Truck Side Hustle

Separate from the robberies, the Salvage Yard's Tow Truck service lets you drive out, hook a random vehicle found in Freemode, and haul it back to be scrapped. Each car nets between $30,000 and $60,000, paid out after two in-game days - or one day if you've bought the Staff upgrade. It's slower and far less profitable per hour than robberies, but it runs passively in the background and doesn't require active grinding, which makes it a reasonable way to top up income between robbery cooldowns or while doing other business errands.

Is the Chop Shop Still Worth It in 2026?

Yes. The Salvage Yard remains one of the more efficient properties in GTA Online's business lineup: the entry price at Paleto Bay is low compared to other CEO-tier businesses, the robberies pay heist-level money for a fraction of the setup time, and the weekly rotation keeps the content from going stale. If you already own a CEO office or MC clubhouse and are choosing what to add next, a Salvage Yard pairs well with existing rotations like the Cluckin' Bell Farm Raid or a vehicle-hunting session using the rare vehicle spawn locations - both fit into the same kind of solo-friendly, session-length loop.