Saline County
A two-man pit, and a restricted crossing at the gate
Goose Pond Quarry works broken stone here with two people. Its coordinate lies 9.27 miles from the middle of the town it is registered to, which is a reminder that the place on a mine registration is an address rather than a map reference.
Wherever it is measured from, the road picture around it is unusually tight at the near end. The closest crossing coded below legal loads sits 0.58 miles from the gate.
The bridges
Nine of the ten belong to the county
That closeness is not the only thing about it. Ten of the 78 structures within ten miles are coded below legal loads, and nine of those ten are county-maintained — so almost the whole restriction picture here belongs to one authority, which is the tier a driver can actually telephone.
The raw minimum among them is 7.3 metric tonnes, below the eleven tonnes an empty tandem dump weighs, so part of what is restricted takes no commercial vehicle at all. The crossing that governs a working load is rated at 14.5 tonnes, admitting about 3.5 tonnes of stone.
Goose Pond Quarry sits among five pits in the Ouachita foothills that all keep between roughly two and five tonnes over their tightest usable crossing. It is the middle of the state’s range, and a tight middle.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.
Arkansas weight law
Three axles or four decides ten thousand pounds
Those crossings are one half of the ceiling. The statute is the other, and for a tandem it closes 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 Saline 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 haul out of Goose Pond 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 Lonsdale
- Will you come out to a place 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 Saline County, including the roads around Goose Pond 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.
- The address on the paperwork is not where the truck is.Common, and it changes nothing about whether we buy it. Tell us where the truck actually stands, because that is what the collection has to reach — the quarry registered to this town sits nine miles from it, which is the ordinary case rather than the odd one.
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 Saline County and the roads out past Goose Pond 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.