Scrap Car Pickup in West Lawn

If you know West Lawn, you probably know the Capitol Cigar Store at 63rd Street and Pulaski Road, the one with the tall Native American statue out front that showed up in Wayne’s World (Wikipedia). That corner is roughly where our route ends up. From the base, the truck goes south on Western Avenue, west along 63rd Street for a couple of miles, then down Pulaski Road. It’s about 3.5 miles to the middle of the community area.

Ford City and the rest of West Lawn

West Lawn has two named parts: West Lawn itself and Ford City, the area right around the Ford City Mall at 76th Street and Cicero Avenue. The mall opened in 1965 and was once the largest shopping mall in Chicago outside downtown; its Wikipedia page now lists it as defunct, closed in June 2026. The site’s history runs through the car business: the Ford aircraft plant, the Dodge Chicago Plant and, after the war, the Tucker Car Corporation all used it.

If your car ended up on mall or store property, the person in charge of that land has to agree to the tow before we hook anything up.

Boundaries on the city map

Central Park Avenue is the line between West Lawn and Chicago Lawn to the east. On the city’s community area map, the northern edge sits around 59th Street, where West Elsdon begins, and the area reaches south past 76th Street. To the northwest is Garfield Ridge, to the west the suburb of Bedford Park and part of Clearing, and to the southwest Burbank. Ashburn and Hometown lie to the southeast and south.

Wikipedia calls West Lawn a melting pot, home to Polish-American, Irish-American and Mexican-American families along with others of Latin American and Eastern European roots. Houses went up in the 1930s, and after World War II new houses and streets followed on what had been swampy land.

Two ZIP codes, one of them barely

On the city’s ZIP boundary file, nearly all of West Lawn is 60629. Matched against 2020 census blocks, about 2 percent of residents, in a few blocks south of 76th Street, are in 60652. If your mail says 60652 and your street is in West Lawn, that’s why.

Snow routes that cross the neighborhood

Several of West Lawn’s busiest streets are on the city’s two-inch snow route list: 63rd Street, Marquette Road and 71st Street running east and west, plus Pulaski Road from 71st Street north. Once two inches of snow is on the street, parking stops there at any hour, and Streets and Sanitation’s winter parking page warns that a car left in place can be ticketed or relocated. Residential blocks off those streets aren’t on the list.

Street sweeping and a car that won’t move

Snow isn’t the only reason a dead car gets in trouble on a West Lawn side street. Streets and Sanitation’s 2026 street sweeping announcement says the season runs from April 1 through the end of November or later, weather permitting, on both residential and arterial streets. Bright orange signs go up two days before a scheduled sweep, and some blocks have permanent signs that ban parking once a week or two days a month. A car that can’t be started can’t be moved for the sweeper either. When the orange signs appear and your car is the one that won’t budge, that’s a good day to call us.

Landmarks for directions

Besides the cigar store statue, West Lawn has the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture on Pulaski Road, which Wikipedia describes as the only museum in the country devoted to Lithuanian history and culture. The neighborhood is split between the 13th and 23rd wards, so you may see either number on city notices. And the Midway Orange Line station, a short drive north, serves plenty of West Lawn residents even though it sits in Garfield Ridge.

Scrap cars and work vehicles

A scrap car is any vehicle whose value is mostly in its metal: a rusted-out sedan, a car with a seized engine, a shell missing half its parts. We buy all of those. See our scrap car page for how we look at them, and our guide to blown engines and transmissions if the drivetrain is what finally gave out. Pickups, cargo vans and SUVs are welcome too on our trucks, vans and SUVs page. Several vehicles at one West Lawn address can go in a single trip.