Salvage Yard Robberies are GTA Online’s bite-sized vehicle heists, added with The Chop Shop update in December 2023. Every week your Salvage Yard offers three robbery contracts, each one a short mission strand that ends with you stealing a specific car — and running all three nets roughly $1M per week, entirely solo. The buy-in is far lower than the big heists, which is exactly why they punch above their weight. To see how that weekly ceiling stacks up against full heist payouts, run the numbers in the heist payout planner.
What you need
The Salvage Yard is the only mandatory purchase — every robbery is planned from its wall board and every mission can be done solo. Five locations are available; Paleto Bay is the cheapest at about $1,620,000, rising to about $2,690,000 for La Puerta. A Los Santos yard saves a lot of driving.
Every upgrade is optional for robberies. Staff (about $625,000) speeds up stripping vehicles for parts, the wall safe (about $750,000) collects a small passive trickle that grows with your yard’s reputation, and Trade Rates (about $450,000) discounts Mors Mutual and LS Customs.
The Tow Truck (about $1,100,000, or $650,000 for the beater version) unlocks towing jobs: haul a wreck back to the yard and it breaks down into cash over time. Slow money, but it stacks passively behind your robberies.
The weekly rotation
Three robbery contracts are active at a time, drawn from a pool of five, and the board re-rolls at the Thursday weekly reset. Each contract targets one specific vehicle, and the three weekly targets are tiered by sale value: the top car sells for roughly $389k–$409k, the middle for roughly $332k–$356k, and the cheapest for roughly $245k–$269k. Rockstar also runs periodic event weeks that boost these payouts, so treat the tiers as a baseline, not a cap.
There is no cooldown juggling — the weekly reset is the only limit. Clear all three contracts and you are done until Thursday.
How each robbery plays out
Every strand follows the same three-stage structure, all soloable:
- Scope out — a free-roam recon mission to locate the target.
- Planning Work — three short free-mode missions (one is optional but feeds the finale, e.g. better equipment or an easier entry).
- Robbery Tasks — three to four free-mode tasks (again, one optional) that stage gear and access for the finale.
Then the finale: steal the car and deliver it. Individual missions are short, and a full strand is comfortably done in a single session once you know the steps.
The five robberies
- The Cargo Ship Robbery — board a container ship anchored offshore and have your stolen Skylift airlift the target away. Generally the most straightforward of the pool.
- The Podium Robbery — lift the podium car out of The Diamond Casino & Resort’s underground vehicle storage.
- The Duggan Robbery — steal a competitor’s vehicle from the Duggan family’s private Arena War event at the Maze Bank Arena.
- The McTony Robbery — infiltrate tech mogul Tony McTony’s Kosatka submarine to take the luxury car stored inside.
- The Gangbanger Robbery — a tip from King Tiny, a Ballas OG sitting in Mission Row lockup, points you at a gang leader’s prized ride.
Sell, scrap, or keep
After the finale you choose what happens to the car:
- Sell to Yusuf — drive it to the Terminal for the full sale price. Damage docks the payout, so drive like it’s your own.
- Strip for parts — salvage it at the yard for roughly 80% of the sale value, with zero crash risk. The safe pick if the delivery route worries you.
- Claim it — since a March 2024 update, one designated target per week can be kept as a personal vehicle for a $20,000 fee ($10,000 if you own a Document Forgery office). You forfeit the sale, but some targets carry liveries and plates you cannot buy anywhere else.
Why it’s strong solo money
Salvage Yard Robberies are the best low-buy-in earner in the game’s current rotation. The yard costs a fraction of a full heist setup, every mission is solo-friendly and short, and roughly $1M per week lands on a schedule that fits around bigger grinds — run your robberies, then go back to Cayo Perico or business sell missions between resets. The tow truck and wall safe keep a passive trickle going on top.
The weekly cap is the honest downside: this is a supplement, not a main income. For where the robberies sit against every proper heist, see the heists ranked hub — and if you’re deciding what to buy next after the yard pays for itself, start with the best businesses ranking.