Yavapai County
One row, 185 people, and the biggest of its kind in the state
A single row is filed here and it is substantial: a cement plant under Phoenix Cement, reporting 185 employees. In the survey these rows come from, that is the largest node in this state.
It does not sit alone in its county. Yavapai County carries 337 of this state’s 631 recorded employees across three rows — this plant with 185, Drake Cement at Paulden with 111 and Rock Ridge Quarries at Paulden with 41. Two cement plants and a dimension-stone quarry in one county is a concentration that no other county on this list comes near.
One thing this page deliberately does not say is who owns Phoenix Cement. There is an understanding about it recorded in the rule file, and it is recorded there explicitly as unverified and flagged for checking rather than for publishing. A claim about ownership needs a source, not a recollection, so it stays off the page.
So the load leaves the valley and goes down a long way
Those 185 employees make a product whose market is not in this county, and getting it there is a descent.
Clarkdale sits in the Verde Valley. The main market is roughly a hundred miles south and about three thousand feet lower, and the whole run is a sustained downgrade with the return leg back up it. Those elevations and distances are read from general geography rather than measured, so treat them as the shape of the problem rather than as figures — but the shape is what puts wear on a truck.
What it wears is brakes and everything attached to them: retarder or engine brake, drums or discs, wheel bearings, and the cooling system that has to cope with a loaded descent in desert heat. None of that is visible on an odometer. So on a truck out of this corner of Yavapai County we go through the braking system in detail and we ask how it was driven downhill, because the honest answer changes what we find.
Arizona weight law
One axle number, and the tolerance is already inside it
Loaded down the hill or empty back up it, the truck runs under a state figure written differently from most.
Arizona sets the single axle at 20,000 lb under A.R.S. § 28-1100, and the enforcement tolerance is included in that number rather than added on top of it. Alabama is the only other state on file that builds it in the same way — Georgia, Kentucky and Florida all publish a base and then allow something over it. So a driver who has worked one of those states and moved here can arrive expecting headroom this section does not give.
The gross limit is a different matter. It was not extracted from the section text when the rule file was compiled, so this page does not state one. An unverified ceiling is worse than no ceiling, and the section itself is where the answer is.
A.R.S. § 28-1100. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
Arizona paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is one sentence and then a set of fixes.
Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Both are ordinary and neither stops a sale.
Arizona has no percentage threshold for salvage. A.R.S. § 28-2091 brands a vehicle salvage where it has been stolen, wrecked, destroyed, flood or water damaged, or otherwise damaged to the point that the owner, the leasing company, the lender or the insurer considers it uneconomical to repair. That is a judgement rather than an arithmetic test, and the wording sits closest to California’s. Four of the seven states on file work this way; Kentucky and Alabama use 75 per cent and Florida 80.
There is also a separate nonrepairable class, and A.R.S. § 28-2095 covers the restored salvage certificate — its inspection triggers were not extracted, so this page does not describe them.
A.R.S. § 28-2091, § 28-2095. Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
Those rules land the same way on every body style, and so does the offer. We buy all of them.
Mixers and bulk cement tankers off the plant, tandem and tri-axle dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds and stake beds, day cabs and road tractors, water trucks, service bodies, box trucks, rollbacks, and the crew pickups. Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Yavapai County thing in particular — they are everywhere — and we buy those too.
All four ways are open: we come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us. With Phoenix Cement at 185 employees being the whole of the record here, the haulage around it is done by contractors, and a contractor with a spare truck has nobody local to sell it to.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Clarkdale
- Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Rust is not a disqualifier.
- How big is the plant?185 employees, which makes it the largest node in this state in the survey these rows come from. Yavapai County carries 337 of the state’s 631 recorded employees across three rows, and this is the biggest of the three.
- My brakes are worn out.We would be surprised if they were not. The haul to the main market is a long sustained descent, so we check the retarder, the drums or discs, the bearings and the cooling system as a matter of course rather than as a mark against the truck.
- Who owns the cement plant?We are not going to say. There is an understanding on file about it and it is recorded as unverified, so it does not belong on a page.
- What is the axle limit?20,000 lb on a single axle under A.R.S. § 28-1100, with the enforcement tolerance already inside that number. Do not add anything to it.
- What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route.
Why people call
Those are the mechanics. The reasons behind a call are more personal than that.
Retiring. A medical that did not go the way it used to. A contract that ended, or an outfit that has grown out of one truck and into another and needs the first one gone. Phoenix Cement employs 185 people and hauls with contractors, and those contractors are small; when a haulage contract turns over, somebody is left with a mixer or a tanker and a payment book.
Most of those aren’t happy reasons, and we don’t treat them like they are. Somebody wants a straight answer and the truck gone by the end of the week. That’s what we’re here for, in Clarkdale and across Yavapai County.