Stone County
A county that maintains fifteen bridges in total
White River Materials works the quarry here with five people, 0.65 miles from the middle of town — near enough to be part of the place rather than out in the county.
And the county is unusual in one respect: it maintains fifteen bridges in total, and posts two of them. Fifteen is the whole inventory, not a sample.
A tier that small can barely be said to hold an answer at all.
The bridges
When the county is absent, the state and the towns decide
That is what happens across Stone County. Three of the 47 structures within ten miles of the White River Materials gate are coded below legal loads, and with the county holding so few bridges the restrictions that matter belong to the state and to the towns instead.
The crossing that governs a load is rated at 21.8 metric tonnes, admitting about 10.8 tonnes of stone over the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump — one of the more generous figures in these hills, and a long way from the eight hundred kilograms some pits a county or two away have to work with.
It also changes who a driver can ask. Where the county holds the bridges, a posting is a telephone call to the road department; where it holds fifteen, it mostly is not.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.
Arkansas weight law
Three axles or four decides ten thousand pounds
That leaves the statute doing more of the work than the signs do, 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.
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 Stone 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 quarry that White River Materials works, a hill farm, or a yard in town 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 Mountain View
- Will you come out into the hills?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 Stone County, including the quarry road that White River Materials uses.
- 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 a decent load rather than a token one.Around here it probably did, because the crossing governing this pit is easier than most in these hills. A truck that carried its rated load is doing what it was built for. 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 pit changing hands, or a haulage contract ending. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.
Around Stone County and the roads out past the White River Materials 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.