We buy trucks in Lavaca

One row carries this town: a National Guard manoeuvre training centre whose coordinate lies 5.18 miles away and reverse-geocodes to Sebastian County. Like several installations in this state it is filed under a town rather than named for where it sits.

Nothing else is on the record within reach — no quarry, mill, terminal or yard — and no bridge measurement was taken at any gate here. This page will not borrow another town’s figures to cover that.

What it can be exact about is the law, and one part of it decides more used-truck sales than the rest put together.

That part is the age carve-out. Arkansas brands a vehicle salvage at damage of seventy per cent or more of average retail value in a guide the Commissioner has approved — and the law does not apply at all to a motor vehicle more than seven model years old before the calendar year of the occurrence.

Most of the trucks anybody sells us are well past that. So for a typical used truck the branding rule never reaches it, whatever the damage came to, and a page telling you that damage over seventy per cent brands a truck here would be wrong about most of the trucks its readers own. A parts-only class also exists in the same rulebook and was not extracted, so nothing is claimed about it.

Where a title does carry a brand it reads salvage, becomes rebuilt on repair — printed in the remarks on the face of the title — and the vehicle cannot be registered until repaired and inspected.

The rest is one sentence: we need a title, unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost one has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route.

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

That is the title half. Weight is the other, 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.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Farm trucks and grain hauls, work trucks and pickups, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies, day cabs and road tractors, box trucks and straight trucks.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Sebastian 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. Out here most of it is standing on a farm or behind a shop rather than in any fleet, and the nearest thing to an industrial gate is 5.18 miles out.

• 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 Sebastian County, including the lanes out toward the range 5.18 miles from here.
• 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.
• It was in a bad wreck years ago. Is it branded?Quite possibly not. The rule here does not reach a vehicle more than seven model years old at the time of the damage, so on an older truck a heavy repair may well have left the title clean. Check what the document says rather than assuming — and either way tell us, because a brand changes the paperwork rather than whether we buy it.
• 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.

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

Around Sebastian County and the farm roads running out 5.18 miles toward the range 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.