Gila County
The tightest crossing on this whole list, at 14.5 tonnes
One row is filed here: a granite operation with 2 employees, its coordinate 2.14 miles from the middle of town. Small, close, and unremarkable on its own.
The road around it is not unremarkable at all. Inside ten miles the 2025 National Bridge Inventory records 33 structures, of which 2 are posted for load and 2 are coded below legal loads. The one that sets the floor is record 07882, carrying Johnson Blvd, 8.13 miles out and county-maintained — and it is rated 14.5 metric tonnes, about 16.0 US tons.
That is by a long way the lowest commercial floor measured anywhere in this state, and the arithmetic is brutal. Item 64 records the gross weight of the rating vehicle, so 14.5 tonnes is the whole truck. An empty tandem dump weighs roughly 11.0 tonnes on its own. About 3.5 tonnes of stone crosses.
So a loaded truck effectively cannot use it
That 3.5 tonnes is not a load. It is a wheelbarrow with a truck around it, and the practical meaning of a crossing rated 14.5 tonnes gross is that a working aggregate truck does not use Johnson Blvd at all.
Read in bands: below 11.0 metric tonnes nothing commercial crosses even empty, between 11.0 and 36.3 the crossing takes a truck only part loaded, and at or above 36.3 a legal load goes over whole. At 14.5 this sits barely above the empty line. So the honest description is not “part loaded” but “another route”, and the nearest restricted structure is 6.59 miles out with the floor-setting one at 8.13.
That shapes a truck’s whole working life in this corner of Gila County: fixed detours, longer legs for the same tonnage, more hours and more fuel, and a driver who knows exactly which roads are usable. The wear goes into miles and hours rather than into strain, and the odometer on a truck from here reads high for the work it has done. We take that as read rather than as a mark against it.
Arizona weight law
One axle number, and the tolerance is already inside it
Whatever route it takes, the load 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.
Tandem and tri-axle dump trucks and aggregate haulers, water trucks, flatbeds and stake beds, day cabs and road tractors, service bodies, box trucks, rollbacks, and the crew pickups. Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Gila 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. If the truck is on the far side of that 14.5-tonne crossing, say so and we will plan around it — it changes the route and nothing else. With 2 employees at the one operation 2.14 miles out, there is no local buyer here in any case.
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 Star Valley
- 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.
- Which crossing is the problem?Record 07882, carrying Johnson Blvd, county-maintained, rated 14.5 metric tonnes and 8.13 miles out. It is the lowest commercial floor measured anywhere in this state.
- What can actually go over it?About 3.5 tonnes of stone, because the 14.5-tonne rating covers the whole vehicle and an empty tandem dump is roughly 11.0 tonnes by itself. In practice a working truck goes another way.
- My mileage is high for a local truck.Detours will do that. Longer legs for the same tonnage put miles and hours on without extra strain, so we read the number against how the work is actually done here.
- 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. A two-person operation 2.14 miles from town, working around a county crossing rated 14.5 tonnes gross with 33 structures in its ten-mile circle, is about as small as a business in Gila County gets — and there is nobody nearby who wants a second truck.
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 Star Valley and across Gila County.