We buy trucks in Cave City

The quarry registered here works industrial sand rather than crushed rock, under American Silica with twenty people. Twenty is a substantial crew for this part of the state, and industrial sand is a different trade from aggregate: it is processed, graded and shipped to specification rather than tipped by the tonne into a road base.

That difference reaches the trucks, and it reaches the drivers who come to load them.

Those drivers fall under Part 46, which covers sand and gravel among others and requires site-specific hazard awareness training for over-the-road delivery drivers before they work at each mine site — each site, not each employer. A driver cleared at one plant is not thereby cleared at the next.

The second rule is newer. The federal respirable crystalline silica standard sets a permissible exposure limit of fifty micrograms per cubic metre and an action level of twenty-five, and the compliance date for metal and non-metal operations, 8 April 2026, is now past. It bites hardest at an operation like this one, because industrial sand is substantially silica by design rather than a rock that happens to contain some. That is a property of the material — no measured exposure at this site was found, and none is claimed here.

None of which is a reason not to sell a truck. It is a reason the truck may carry paperwork, and we would rather know about it than find it.

Mine Safety and Health Administration, Part 46 and the respirable crystalline silica rule; site record for American Silica.

Those are federal rules. The state adds its own limit on top of them, and for a tandem the sharpest edge is an axle count.

Ark. Code § 27-35-203 holds a single axle to twenty thousand pounds and two or more consecutive axles to thirty-four thousand. Where a vehicle takes the section’s axle variance, three axles may not exceed seventy thousand pounds gross and four or more may not exceed eighty thousand — ten thousand pounds settled by the axle count alone, 31.75 metric tonnes against 36.3.

A second limb reaches older equipment. Where a vehicle carries no plate attached by the manufacturer giving its axle and gross ratings, the maximum allowed on the front or steering axle is twelve thousand pounds, which turns a rating question into a statutory one on any truck old enough to have lost its plate.

Ark. Code § 27-35-203. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is that one sentence.

Everything after it is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.

The salvage rule brands a vehicle where it is water-damaged as the rule defines that — a limb of its own, needing no percentage — or where other damage reaches seventy per cent of average retail value in a pricing guide the Commissioner has approved. It does not apply to vehicles more than seven model years old before the year of the occurrence that caused the damage, which is most of what we buy.

Arkansas DFA administrative rule 006.05 2007-8, read alongside § 27-35-203. Information, not legal advice.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, tankers, farm trucks and grain hauls, flatbeds, rollbacks, service bodies, day cabs and road tractors, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Sharp County speciality — they are everywhere. They are on the list because we buy them here too.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them. Most of what turns up comes off the haul road at American Silica, a farm lane, or a shop yard that sees neither.

• Will you come out to a town this size?Yes, and often we don’t need to. 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. Anywhere in Sharp County, including the haul roads around American Silica.
• 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.
• The engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• 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. A lienholder means a payoff and a release, and that is the slow part.
• It hauled sand, so everything on it is worn.Sand is abrasive and it does get everywhere — seals, brakes, tipping gear, the lot. That is expected on a truck off this kind of work and it does not stop us buying. Tell us what it carried, because it changes what we look at rather than whether we are interested.

Those answers matter more than the dust rules do, because the reasons behind the call are ordinary. Retiring. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. A haulage contract ending, or a plant changing what it runs. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.

Around Sharp County and the roads out past American Silica there is usually one waiting.

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.