Frederick County, VA Parking Rules: Abandoned Vehicles (2026)

C, part of the Zoning Ordinance's Part 808 storage standards, draws a bright line on junk vehicles: outdoor storage of an inoperable motor vehicle or trailer outside a totally enclosed building is banned in every zoning district in the county except the RA (Rural Areas) District. Where the vehicle sits in RA and is not inside a building, it must still be completely screened from public roads and from surrounding properties, using opaque fences, opaque landscaping or opaque natural vegetation, not a chain-link fence or a simple tarp.

The rule sits alongside the Part's broader outdoor-storage and trash-storage standards, which require any permitted outdoor storage to be screened by a six-foot opaque fence, wall, berm or evergreen screen and kept off an impervious surface approved by the Zoning Administrator, reinforcing that the county treats a dead vehicle the same way it treats other unsightly outdoor storage, hidden from the street and the neighbors rather than banned outright everywhere. The definitions section of the Solid Waste chapter separately defines an ABANDONED VEHICLE as any vehicle incapable of being properly operated, including an unlicensed vehicle as defined by the county's Zoning Ordinance, tying the concept back to the same Zoning Ordinance standard rather than creating a second, conflicting rule.

Because the ban is district-wide outside RA, a resident of the RP, R4, R5, MH1, MS, business or industrial districts cannot keep a wrecked, non-running car or trailer in the open at all, screened or not.