The form you sign when the vehicle is not being sold to anybody - it is going to a crusher, a parts yard, or a hole in the yard behind the workshop. It is a sworn notice, and it is one of the few Alaska transactions in which the plates come off the vehicle at all, because the statute behind it asks for the certificates of title and registration and the registration plates to be forwarded to the department together. What the vehicle stops being is registrable: title and registration expire when a vehicle is disassembled or sold for scrap or parts, and no amount of later regret undoes that without a reconstruction.
Written against Form 849 (Rev 12/2015), issued under AS 28.10.351, which requires a person who dismantles, scraps or destroys a registered vehicle to immediately forward the certificates and the plates to the department.
Think about the order. Filing this form ends the vehicle's registration and brands the record, so a seller who is still hoping somebody will buy the shell for parts should not sign it first - a vehicle that has already been declared junk is worth less to a yard than one that has not, and the paperwork cannot be unwound. If the vehicle is complete and merely unroadworthy, the salvage application in this set is likely the form you actually want.
Two documents, and they are not the same thing. Take the blank Form 849 from the dmv.alaska.gov copy so you get the revision that is current today, then print our Form 849 guide and keep it beside you while you fill theirs in.
This is the actual Form 849, rendered from the PDF the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles, Department of Administration publishes and completed end to end: letterhead, every field, and the blocks at the foot.
Amber — you write it
Grey — not yours to fill
Numbered — explained below
Rendered from the Division's own PDF for a vehicle going to a dismantler. Amber is the owner's; grey is the notary block and the counter's own checklist, which records whether the title, the registration and the plates were actually handed over. The signature rule is left for pen: it carries no fillable box behind it, it has no neighbouring box on its line to be positioned between, and it is signed while the officer watches in any event. Every name, plate and serial number is invented.
Field by field
Every line, in the order you meet it
1
You fill this in
Plate, state and serial number
The identification row, with the state the plate belongs to.
Watch out: Read the serial number off the vehicle if you can still get to it. A junked record is matched on the VIN, and the plate is about to be surrendered.
2
You fill this in
Year, make, model, body style, colour
The description row, taken from the certificate.
Watch out: Describe what the Division has on record, not what is left after the fire or the collision - the record is what this notice is amending.
3
You fill this in
Printed name and job title
One box for both, plus a company name where a business is signing.
Watch out: A private owner leaves the job title and company blank. The line exists for dismantlers, who file these constantly.
4
You fill this in
Address, then sign under oath
Mailing address, city, state and zip, then the signature witnessed by a notary public or DMV representative.
Watch out: Take the title, the registration and the plates with you. The counter's own block records whether all three were surrendered, and that is what completes the transaction.
At a glance
What goes where
On the form
What to put in it
Licence plate number, state, serial number
The identification row. State is asked for because a vehicle being junked here may still carry another jurisdiction's plate.
Year, make, model, body style, colour
The description row under it, filled from the certificate rather than from what is left of the vehicle.
The penalty paragraph
The Division's standard sworn wording: personally reviewed, certified under penalty of perjury, with a maximum penalty of $10,000 or 1 year imprisonment or both per AS 11.56.210 and AS 28.35.135.
Printed Name and Job Title (if applicable)
One box for both. An individual writes a name; a dismantler's employee writes a name and a role.
Company Name (if applicable)
Empty for a private owner.
Mailing Address, City, State, Zip Code
Where the Division writes back if it needs to.
Signature
Under the certification, witnessed by the officer in the notary block below.
Notary block
Subscribed and sworn to before me this day of, 20 __, a seal, the officer's signature with login ID and office location, and a commission expiry, over the standard identity-only note.
DMV USE ONLY
Three yes-or-no questions the counter answers, and they are the real checklist for this transaction: title surrendered, registration surrendered, license plates surrendered. Under them, the licence or ID number of the signer, the state, and the AMVC or office location.
What gets this one rejected
•Turning up with the vehicle but not the documents. The counter block asks whether the title, the registration and the plates were surrendered, and the statute requires all three to be forwarded immediately.
•Signing it for a vehicle you do not own. This is a sworn statement about a vehicle's fate, and the person swearing it has to be the owner of record or an authorised agent of the company that is.
•Filing it because the vehicle is badly damaged but repairable. Junking is not a description of condition - it is a declaration that the vehicle is being dismantled, scrapped or destroyed, and it ends the vehicle's registrability.
•Leaving the notary block for later. Like every sworn Alaska vehicle form, the signature is witnessed, and the Division accepts its own representative in place of a notary.
•Expecting to keep the plates. This is the one transaction where they come off, and they come off to be surrendered rather than to be kept as a souvenir.
Rules that decide whether it is accepted
•An insurance total loss is a different route. Where an insurer takes an unrepairable vehicle in settlement of a total loss, 2 AAC 92.170(a) has the insurer mark the word junk on the face of the certificate and surrender the title and registration - and it may then sell the vehicle by a bill of sale saying the title has been surrendered.
•Junk is a brand that follows the vehicle. Once branded, the vehicle cannot simply be registered again. Since August 2025 the Division can issue a salvage title over a junk brand, and a road-going certificate needs a reconstruction and an inspection after that.
•The registration ends by operation of regulation. 2 AAC 92.090 does not wait for paperwork: title to and registration of a vehicle expires when it is disassembled or sold for scrap or parts.
•Immediately means immediately. The statute's word, not ours. There is no ten-day window here of the kind that governs an ordinary sale - the documents and plates go to the Division when the vehicle is destroyed.
•Off-highway machines are not junked on this form. A snowmachine or an ATV has no title to surrender. The Division's notification for those is the sale notification form, and the fifteen-day termination-of-use rule printed on it.
