If your insurance company says your car is a total loss but you want to have it fixed can they charge you a salvage fee to keep your own car?

Any vehicle, whether a total loss or not, has a value. A totaled vehicle, of course, has a significantly lesser value (assuming the actual total loss has already been settled with the vehicle owner). This value can be anywhere from 5 - 25% of the pre-loss value of the vehicle.

If you decide to keep a totaled vehicle after settling with an insurance carrier, they can legally remove the salvage value from your settlement. It shouldn't be much, and you can request that they actually get a salvage quote from a salvage yard.

The idea behind this is that you can't legally profit from a loss. In your case, if your totaled vehicle has a salvage value, and you're keeping the vehicle, the insurance carrier must deduct that salvage value. Otherwise, you will get a full settlement, and still retain a vehicle with some value.

But...try working with the carrier on what that salvage amount is going to be. Sometimes they'll adjust it to get the loss settled, since you never "really" know what the salvage value is going to be until the vehicle is sold at a salvage yard auction.