I pulled this off topic and will move this conversation to the electrical section. To close out the original intent:
I used IAAI and Copart Auction sites as well as Craigslist and Facebook marketplace to look for my dream Cobalt. Used and very high mileage Cobalts go for about $1800-$3000 here in Houston and at auction they would go for 250-1000 for the NA depending on condition.
Copart allows you in Texas to bid on Salvage cars without a license but it seems that for minor damage they would leave the title clean and force you to get a broker and pay the fees. IAAI makes you get a broker for any car there so I went with Salvagebid to be able to pre-bid. You have to secure a $400 deposit to bid and I tried once before to win a car (and Lost) and after 30 days they emailed me that they refunded the deposit. I found it easy to get set up and good communication on their end. When the current Cobalt came to bid, again on IAAI, I added a new deposit to bid on it. painless again as they had all my other information such as a scan of my ID and credit card info. On their website you can see with fees (minus transport) so that there are no surprises. I placed a bid to be the top pre-bid at Salvagebid brokerage heading into the auction. Pre-bid ends usually 2 hours before the auction begins and you have to pay extra to bid live.
One thing to note is while I was the high bidder at Salvagebid, a look at IAAI's website showed I was NOT the high bidder as there are other brokerages and pre-bid entries. Make sure you are happy with your standing by checking IAAI's site as well. In the last few available pre-bid minutes, I stretched my pre-bid price to be the highest pre-bid entry going into the live auction. As it turns out, there were no live auction bids on the car...maybe for good reason...and I won.
Salvage Bid called me as well as emailed me the results and started the electronic paper signing. All very easy on the website. One thing to note is that in my invoice it was to the penny for their estimate EXCEPT they added a premium membership fee (+$175) to the bill. As I was writing an email to address this, they called me to see how it was going and once alerted them to the "error", they happily removed. So watch out for the upcharge. The only difficult part was getting my bank to wire the money to the Salvagebid. Once cleared, Salvage bid released the car for transport and sent a link (EasyHaul.com) for towing from Fort Worth, Texas to Houston (about 230 miles for non Texans).
Again the price for shipping was exact to the penny so no surprises. Clicking the link loaded all my information to EasyHaul and all I had to do was use the credit card to pay them. The car ID number, pickup and delivery addresses were already in their system. Makes for easy dealing. EasyHaul website is a lot like UPS tracking where you can see each stage of the shipping process as it happens. They get the delivery person assigned and send you name and phone numbers to help coordinate. I was surprised when I got notification that the day of delivery was about 3 days earlier than initial estimate...not that I minded. Had a few text and phone calls with the driver to coordinate on the delivery locations as he originally stated that he does not like to enter neighborhoods as with a large trailer he can get stuck with tight turns. He called to say he was 1 hour away, then 15 minutes away, then called to say he was going to explore the neighborhood (probably via google maps)...and then 5 minutes later he was at the end of my cul-de-sac street. Once offloaded, sighed for it on his phone, we both got confirmation that the deal was done and we parted ways.
In the end I feel like I paid a lot for a car but I got pretty much exactly what I wanted and didn't want to be driving around Houston finding worn out cars and Houston auction shipping (don't own truck or trailer) was only $30 less than from Fort Worth.
In the end I spent:
$875 Cobalt
$299 SalvageBid brokerage fee
$320 IAAI auction fee
$85 Salvagebid doc fee to transfer the title and Fedex it to me (3 weeks)
$273 EsyHail.com transport from Fort Worth to Houston
My adventure continues..
Joe