u/LanternMirth

This situation has been dragging on for months and I am completely done dealing with it. Around fourteen months ago, an old acquaintance of mine, let us call him Mike, bought a total basket case of a car. It is an old sedan that does not run, has no interior to speak of, and needs a massive amount of welding and mechanical work just to be safely rolled onto a trailer. Mike did not have a garage or any driveway space at his place because his landlord is incredibly strict about junk vehicles sitting around. Since I have a decent sized property with a large shed and some extra space out back, he asked if he could park it here for a maximum of three weeks until he sorted out a storage unit.

I figured three weeks was not a big deal since the car would be out of the way behind the shed. I explicitly told him that three weeks was the hard limit because I planned to use that exact space to store timber and materials for a workshop extension I am building. Mike was incredibly grateful, swore up and down that he would have it moved by the end of the month, and even offered to buy me a case of beer for the trouble. I never saw that beer, and more importantly, I never saw him come back for the car.

Month two rolls around and I message him to ask what the plan is. He gives me a long story about how his cash is tight, the storage unit prices went up, and he just needs another two weeks. I am a reasonable guy so I said fine, but told him it needs to happen soon. After that, the excuses just kept mutating. First it was his work schedule, then he was waiting on a cheap towing hook, then he had some family stuff to handle. Eventually, he just stopped responding to my texts altogether or would give me one word answers three days after I sent a message.

Fast forward to last month. I am finally ready to start the groundwork for my workshop extension and this rusted out shell is directly in the way of where the excavator needs to go. I sent Mike a final text stating that he had exactly ten days to get a flatbed out here and haul his property away or I would consider it abandoned. He read the message, did not reply for five days, and then sent a wall of text claiming I am a terrible friend, that he has been going through a rough patch, and that I am threatening to steal his project. He still did not give me a date or time for when he would actually move the thing.

The ten days passed last week. I ended up talking to a local guy who buys junk vehicles for scrap and spare parts, and he offered me a few hundred bucks to come winched the car out and take it off my hands. He has the paperwork sorted on his end for dealing with abandoned property sales. I told another mutual friend about this plan and he completely flipped out on me. He says that selling Mike's car without his explicit permission is a massive violation of trust and that it will completely ruin whatever relationship we have left.

From my perspective, Mike used my property as free long term storage for over a year, ignored my boundaries, and stalled my own project. I gave him plenty of warnings and he chose to ignore them. I am not a free junkyard.

So, would I be the asshole if I let the scrap guy take it and keep the cash?