We buy trucks in Marion

Union Pacific opened its intermodal facility here in 1998, on 600 acres north-west of the town, and describes it as one of its largest. It sits just north of the point where two interstates converge.

An intermodal gate is a particular kind of neighbour for a truck. Containers arrive by rail and leave by road on short local runs, so the work around it is drayage — day cabs pulling chassis, out and back, many times a day.

There is more than one railroad in that picture.

Those two are not the same company. The intermodal rows here belong to Union Pacific, 3.42 miles from the centre, while BNSF Railway Company works a yard 2.24 miles out. A separate intermodal ramp is recorded in the town itself.

So the freight that turns into truck movements around Crittenden County comes off two networks rather than one, and it comes off them all day. That is the local fact; what it means for a seller is simply that there are a lot of high-hour day cabs here, and high hours are not a mark against a truck.

That work runs on the interstate more than most does, and the state weight statute is where its ceiling starts.

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.

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.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, tankers, rollbacks and car haulers, service bodies, farm trucks, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Crittenden 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 here comes off the drayage runs around the Union Pacific gate, a farm road, or a shop lot that sees neither.

• Do you buy high-hour drayage tractors?Yes. Short repeated runs put hours on an engine far faster than they put miles on an odometer, and that is normal here rather than a defect. 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 Crittenden County and around the Union Pacific gate.
• 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 is a day cab with no sleeper. Does that matter?No. Day cabs are most of what works a ramp and they are ordinary for us. Tell us the hours as well as the miles if the meter has them, because on this kind of work the two say very different things.

Those answers matter more than the freight does, because the reasons behind the call are ordinary. Retiring. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. A contract ending, or an owner-operator coming off the ramp for good. A truck standing behind a shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.

Around Crittenden County and the roads feeding the Union Pacific gate 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.