Montgomery County
Three people, and the widest margin of five foothill pits
Alexander Quarry works limestone here with three people under Ronnie Duffield Gravel Company, 3.01 miles from the middle of town. Three is a small crew even by this state’s standards.
What it has is room. Among five pits running through the Ouachita foothills, this one keeps more stone over its tightest usable crossing than any of the others.
The bridges
Five tonnes where its neighbours keep two
Those five sit side by side neatly. This pit runs 7.3% restricted with a floor of 16.3 metric tonnes, admitting about 5.3 tonnes of stone over the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump. The others land between 1.7 and 3.5 tonnes — Crusher No 1 at 12.7 tonnes, McHenry Aggregates and Goose Pond Quarry at 14.5, and Gravel Mountain Quarry tightest of all in a county that posts nearly half its bridges.
Five tonnes against under two is not a detail. It is the difference between one trip and two for the same tonnage, every day, on the same roads.
Which is why a figure from the pit over the hill is not a figure for this one, and why the number that matters is measured at the gate rather than at the courthouse.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.
Arkansas weight law
Three axles or four decides ten thousand pounds
So the road here is comparatively generous, which pushes the binding constraint onto the statute instead.
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 Montgomery 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 Alexander Quarry, a lake-side contractor’s yard, or a farm lane 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 Mount Ida
- Will you come out to a three-man pit?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 Montgomery County, including the roads around Alexander 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 carried full loads rather than part ones.Likely true here, and it is not against the truck. Carrying a rated load is what a truck is built to do; what wears one out early is overloading or neglect, not honest work. Tell us the hours if the meter has them.
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 Montgomery County and the roads out past Alexander 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.