We buy trucks in Hot Springs

The three stone operations registered to this city are all small ones. Crusher No 1 carries four people under Coakley Company, Fox Pass six under Fox Pass Development, and McHenry Aggregates three. Two of them work limestone and the third is carried simply as broken stone.

Their coordinates fall 12.40, 4.12 and 5.88 miles from the middle of town, which is a spread rather than a cluster — these are hillside pits on separate roads, not one district with a shared gate.

Crews that size tell you something about the trucks. A four-man pit does not run a fleet; it runs a few units hard and keeps them a long time.

Those three sit inside a run of five quarries through the Ouachita foothills, and every one of the five keeps between 1.7 and 5.3 tonnes of stone over the tightest commercially usable crossing within ten miles. Crusher No 1 meets seven restrictions in 110 structures, 6.4%, with a floor of 12.7 metric tonnes that admits about 1.7 tonnes of stone. Fox Pass meets twelve restrictions in 209 structures and McHenry Aggregates fifteen in 199, both landing on a floor of 14.5 tonnes admitting 3.5.

The other two in that run are tighter still. Gravel Mountain Quarry over in Hot Spring County is 16.7% restricted with all fourteen of its restrictions county-maintained, and Goose Pond Quarry has its nearest restricted crossing 0.58 miles from the gate. Alexander Quarry, in Montgomery County, has the widest margin of the five at 7.3%.

All five raw minima fall between 4.5 and 7.3 tonnes, so at every one of them part of what is restricted takes no commercial vehicle at all, even running empty, and the crossing that actually decides the load is the next one up. This is the middle of the state’s distribution, and it is a tight middle.

FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 41, 64 and 70.

Those crossings are one half of the limit. The statute is the other, and on a small pit’s tandem dump it bites 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 — so a three-axle truck gives up ten thousand pounds against a four-axle one, 31.75 metric tonnes against 36.3.

There is a second limb aimed squarely at 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. On a truck that has been in one pit for twenty years, that plate is often long gone.

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, or where other damage reaches seventy per cent of average retail value in a pricing guide the Commissioner has approved. The water-damage limb stands on its own and needs no percentage. But none of it applies to vehicles more than seven model years old before the year of the occurrence that caused the damage — which covers most of what comes out of a pit like these.

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, farm trucks, 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 Garland 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 hillside pit road, a lake-side contractor’s yard, or a shop out toward Fox Pass.

• Will you actually drive out to a pit road?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 Garland County, including the hillside pits and the roads out past Fox Pass.
• 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 has been at the same quarry since it was new.That is common here and it is not a problem. One owner and one job usually means records exist and the wear is even. Tell us the hours if the meter has them, because short repeated hauls on pit roads show up in the running gear long before the odometer says so.

Those answers matter more than the geology does, 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 Garland County and the pit roads out toward Fox Pass 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.