Pike County
A two-man quarry with the easiest run in the state
Antoine Rock Quarry works broken stone here with two people, 3.63 miles from the middle of town. Two is about as small as a registered pit gets.
What it has, and most pits in this state do not, is room to load.
The bridges
Thirteen and a half tonnes, which is the softest cap around
That room comes from the crossing that binds it: a state highway rated at 24.5 metric tonnes, admitting about 13.5 tonnes of stone over the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump. Set beside pits capped at eight hundred kilograms elsewhere in the state, that is a different business entirely — one trip instead of several for the same tonnage.
It is also part of a pattern peculiar to this state. Six of the fifty-four quarry networks measured here are capped by a state highway rather than a county road or a city street, which is more than any other state measured, where two or fewer is the rule. That follows from the maintainer split: the state holds 56.7% of all structures here, the largest share met anywhere.
And it changes something practical. A county road department is a telephone call; a state highway posting is not. At the far end of that range sits Pocahontas Quarry, with eight restrictions in 89 structures — 9.0% — only one county-maintained, in a county posting one of the fifty-nine bridges it holds, a rate of 1.7%.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.
Arkansas weight law
Three axles or four decides ten thousand pounds
So the road here is generous, and the statute becomes the binding constraint rather than the bridge.
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.
Arkansas paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
What we buy here
None of that narrows what we will look at. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, flatbeds, tankers, 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 Pike 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 road out of Antoine Rock Quarry, a farm lane, or a shop yard that sees neither.
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 Delight
- 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 Pike County, including the road out to Antoine Rock Quarry.
- 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 ran full loads its whole life rather than part loads.Around here that is likely true, and it is not against it. A truck that carried its rated load is doing what it was built for; what wears one out early is usually overloading or neglect, not honest work. Tell us the hours if the meter has them.
Why people call
Those answers matter more than the bridge ratings do, because the reasons behind the call are ordinary. Retiring. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. A small pit winding down or changing hands. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.
Around Pike County and the roads out past Antoine Rock 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.