Izard County
Seventeen people, and eight hundred kilograms to work with
Thomas Crushing works Love Hollow Quarry here with seventeen people, 6.14 miles from the middle of the town. Seventeen is a real crew — several times the size of most pits in these hills.
What that crew can put on a truck is another matter entirely.
The bridges
Every restriction is the county’s, and the cap is the tightest kind
That is because the crossing which governs its loads is rated at 11.8 metric tonnes, and an empty tandem dump already weighs eleven of those. About eight hundred kilograms of stone is what fits over the top — the tightest band there is.
Six of the 42 structures within ten miles are coded below legal loads, and all six are county-maintained, with the nearest 5.37 miles from the gate. Izard County posts sixteen of the fifty-seven bridges it holds.
Three of the four southern Ozark pits measured sit in this same band, at or under 12.7 tonnes. It is a run of country where the stone is easy to get out of the ground and hard to get away from it.
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 postings 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 an Izard 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 Love Hollow 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 Mount Pleasant
- 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 Izard County, including the roads around Love Hollow 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 has run part-loaded its whole life because of the bridges.That is the normal story in these hills. More trips for the same tonnage means the hours run well ahead of the miles, and the wear sits in clutch, brakes and tipping gear rather than the driveline. Tell us both figures 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 pit or a haulage contract winding down. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.
Around Izard County and the roads out past Love Hollow 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.