Sell your semi truck for cash in Tucson the easy and convenient way

Three copper operations ring this city and between them they employ 1,703 people. Sierrita carries 1,074, the row filed as Mission with San Xavier and Eisenhower — three operations in one field — carries 447, and Silver Bell Mining 182. Mission sits 16.2 miles out, Silver Bell 18.3 and Sierrita 25.1. That is almost exactly the workforce of the whole Globe and Miami copper district, inside one metropolitan county.

The rail beside it is not incidental. Tucson Yard is Union Pacific’s principal yard in the state, on the Sunset Route, and the Gila and Lordsburg subdivisions that reach it are Class 5 track dispatched by centralised traffic control. The Port of Tucson, the only inland port in the state, occupies 770 acres on the same corridor with powered high-speed switches so trains can run straight in and out.

Two more kinds of row are filed here as well: a sand and gravel plant with 13 employees, and three federal entries — Davis-Monthan Air Force Base 1.4 miles from the middle of town, Air Force Plant 44 at 5.65, and the Air National Guard row at the international airport at 4.83.

Those two facts — 1,703 people at three mines and a Class 5 main line through the middle — pull trucks into two quite different lives.

One is the mine road: haul trucks, water trucks and service bodies working a fixed loop out to Mission at 16.2 miles or Silver Bell at 18.3, never leaving the county, wearing out brakes, cooling and suspension while the odometer barely moves. The other is the yard and the 770 acres of inland port: day cabs and road tractors doing drayage runs measured in hours, stop-start all day, engine hours piling up against short trips.

Both produce a truck whose mileage understates its work, and they do it for opposite reasons. So we ask which one it was before we ask anything else, because it changes what we look at first — a mine truck gets checked at the springs and the radiator, a drayage tractor at the clutch, the fifth wheel and the hour meter.

Both of those lives run 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 rail alongside carries its own limits and they are not the same thing at all: every line the western carrier runs in this state takes 286,000 lb cars, while the Chandler Industrial Lead is held to 268,000. Those are car ratings, not truck ratings, and nothing on a highway is governed by them.

The gross weight limit for trucks 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.

A.R.S. § 28-1100. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

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.

Those rules land the same way on every body style, and so does the offer. We buy all of them.

Day cabs and road tractors off the drayage runs, sleepers off the long ones, tandem and tri-axle dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the pits, water trucks and service bodies off the mine roads, flatbeds and stake beds, car haulers, rollbacks, box trucks, and the crew pickups behind all of it. Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Pima County thing in particular — they are everywhere — and we buy those too.

Every way of doing this is ordinary in a city this size: 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. And a note on condition that is genuinely local: the Air Force keeps its stored airframes at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, on over 2,600 acres, because the dry air does not corrode them. Whether that has been kind to your truck is a guess on our part rather than a measurement — nothing in that record is about road vehicles — but it is the first thing a buyer from a salted state asks about.

• 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, and around here there is usually less of it.
• How big is the mining side, really?1,703 employees across three operations: Sierrita 1,074, the Mission row 447 and Silver Bell Mining 182. Mission is 16.2 miles out, Silver Bell 18.3, Sierrita 25.1.
• My truck only ever ran drayage.Then the hour meter matters more than the odometer. Tucson Yard is the principal yard in the state and the Port of Tucson runs to 770 acres, so short high-cycle work is normal here and we price the wear where it actually is.
• Does the dry air help?It is why the Air Force stores airframes at Davis-Monthan, on over 2,600 acres. Applying that to a truck is our inference and not a measurement, so treat it as a reason a buyer will look closely rather than as a promise.
• 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.

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. Around three operations employing 1,703 people there are a great many one-truck and two-truck outfits doing the work those operations do not do in house, and it is almost always one of those calling — not Sierrita at 25.1 miles, and not Silver Bell Mining at 18.3.

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 Tucson and across Pima County.