Boone County
Two quarries, eight miles apart, one operator
Two crushed-stone quarries are registered to this town and APAC-Central runs both. The north pit carries five people and sits 5.31 miles from the centre; Valley Springs Quarry carries two and sits 2.79 miles out. Eight miles separate them.
Two pits, one operator, and — as it turns out — one bridge.
The bridges
One city street sets the load at both pits
That bridge is on Central Avenue, and it is city-maintained rather than county or state. Both quarries bind on it, and both return the same commercial floor of 21.8 metric tonnes — about 10.8 tonnes of stone over the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump, which is a generous margin by this state’s standards.
Each meets five restrictions, in 72 and 75 structures — 6.9% and 6.7% — with two county-maintained at each and the nearest 6.14 and 3.71 miles out. Boone County posts four of the twenty-three bridges it maintains, so the county tier is thin here and the city holds the answer.
That the two agree is not automatic, and it is the interesting part. A pair of quarries over in Benton County also share one binding structure and yet come back with different floors, because a shared crossing only sets a shared figure when it is the minimum inside both ten-mile circles. Here it is. There it was not.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.
Arkansas weight law
Three axles or four decides ten thousand pounds
That margin is the road’s answer. The statute gives a second one, and on a three-axle truck it arrives first.
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 Boone 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 pit roads around Valley Springs 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 Harrison
- Do you come up into the hills for one truck?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 Boone County, including the roads around Valley Springs 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 loaded through town every day.Most of them here did, because that is where the crossing is. Stop-start work through a town centre is harder on brakes, clutch and driveline than the mileage suggests, and it is the sort of thing we would rather hear from you than work out afterwards.
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 pit or a haulage contract winding down. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.
Around Boone County and the roads out past Valley Springs 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.