The document that ends a vehicle's life on the Department's record. It is completed and signed by the buyer, not by you - an automotive dismantler and parts recycler, a secondary metals recycler, or somebody outside Alabama buying vehicles to dismantle or crush - and it goes in with your certificate of title so that the Department can cancel it. If you are scrapping a car, this is the form the yard should be filling in while you watch, and the reason they will ask you for the title.
Written against MVT 5-48 (10/20), issued under Code of Ala. 1975, Section 32-8-49(a)(2); Ala. Admin. Code r. 810-5-75-.48. Do not hand over a signed, open certificate to a scrapyard and walk away. The notice names you as the seller and requires your certificate, so the yard has everything it needs to complete it properly - and a title that leaves your hands without the assignment filled in is a title somebody else can complete. Ask for a copy of the completed notice before you go.
Two documents, and they are not the same thing. Take the blank MVT 5-48 from the revenue.alabama.gov copy so you get the revision that is current today.
There is no completed MVT 5-48 on this page. The Department publishes it as a flat PDF - no AcroForm in the file, no fillable box anywhere on it - and every value on this site's sample images is placed from a rectangle the document itself defines rather than from a measurement taken off a screenshot. On this particular form only a handful of those rectangles resolve: the vehicle band at the top, the two name lines and the signature rule do not, so a sample would show a form filled in down one side and blank down the other. The field list above is transcribed from the printed form in the order it asks for things, and the yard completing it will have the sheet in front of them anyway.
| On the form | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Vehicle identification number, title number, date of purchase | The top row. The title number is there because a certificate has to travel with the notice. |
| Year, make, model | The row underneath, giving the vehicle its name. |
| Primary and secondary colour, cylinders, body style | Three more fields, the level of description the Department keeps on its own record. |
| Name of seller or owner | You. Your name goes on the yard's form even though you do not sign it. |
| Seller's address, city, state, ZIP | The row beneath, again yours. |
| Licence plate number and state of issuance | Both marked if applicable - and in Alabama, usually not applicable, because the plate came off the car before it was sold and stayed with you. |
| Name of buyer and buyer's address | The yard, the recycler or the out-of-state crusher. |
| Buyer's NMVTIS ID number | Marked if applicable. It is the identifier a recycler carries in the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, which is the federal database this notice ultimately feeds. |
| The certification and signature | That the above described vehicle has been acquired as junk, parts only or by a scrap metal processor for the purpose of recycling it into metallic scrap for remelting purposes, signed and dated by the buyer or an authorised representative. |
Every line here was read off MVT 5-48 (10/20) itself — the PDF is here — and off the Alabama Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division pages. This is plain-language help with a form, not legal advice, and where our wording and the agency's differ, theirs governs.
Back to all Alabama seller paperwork, or what selling a car in Alabama involves.