We buy trucks in Conway

Three rows are attached to this city and they are not all the same trade. Rogers Group works Greenbrier Quarry on crushed sandstone with ten people; Lentz Sand & Gravel works construction sand and gravel with five. The third is not industrial at all — the Eldridge-Harrington reserve centre, 3.38 miles from the middle of town.

Sandstone and river sand are different loads. One is quarried and crushed, the other dredged or dug and washed, and the trucks that move them wear in different places.

Those differences matter before anybody looks at a truck. Crushed sandstone is angular and it is hard on a body — it gouges liners and it does not slide out cleanly. Wet river sand is heavy, it packs, and it finds every seal and pivot on a tipping gear.

Neither is a mark against a truck. Both are simply things we would rather hear from the owner than work out from the state of the body, because they tell us where to look. A truck off Greenbrier Quarry and a truck off a Lentz Sand pit will have led different lives even if the odometers match.

What they share is the ceiling the state puts on both.

That ceiling is a weight statute, and its sharpest edge for a tandem 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, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies, farm trucks, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Faulkner 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 a sand pit, the roads around Greenbrier Quarry, or a contractor’s yard that sees neither.

• Do you come out, or is this all remote?Either. 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. All four are ordinary across Faulkner County and out to Greenbrier Quarry, and the remote purchase needs nobody on site.
• 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.
• The body is gouged from hauling rock.Expected, and not a disqualifier. A worn liner or a scarred bed is what a working tipper looks like. What we do want to know is whether the tipping gear and the frame under it are sound, because that is where the real cost sits.

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

Around Faulkner County and the roads between the sand pits and Greenbrier Quarry 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.