Hot Spring County
Two people, and fourteen restrictions all held by one authority
Gravel Mountain Quarry works broken stone here with two people, 6.71 miles from the middle of the place. Fourteen of the 84 structures within ten miles are coded below legal loads — and all fourteen are county-maintained, with the nearest 1.12 miles from the gate.
One authority holding every restriction is unusual, and it is the useful kind of unusual.
The bridges
A county that posts nearly half of what it holds
That is because Hot Spring County posts thirty-eight of the eighty-five bridges it maintains — close to half, and eighty-five is its entire inventory rather than a sample. A county posting at that rate is making a statement about its whole network, not about one crossing.
What it leaves a loaded truck is 12.7 metric tonnes at the binding crossing, admitting about 1.7 tonnes of stone over the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump. That is among the tighter figures in these foothills, where five measured pits run between roughly two and five tonnes, and Gravel Mountain Quarry sits at the hard end of them.
The practical upside is that every one of those signs belongs to a road department a driver can ring. Where the state holds the restrictions instead, that call does not exist.
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 a Hot Spring 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 Gravel Mountain Quarry, a lake-side 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 Pearcy
- Will you come out here for one truck?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 Hot Spring County, including the roads around Gravel Mountain 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 spent years on posted roads.Most trucks here have, in a county that posts what this one does. Part loads mean more trips for the same tonnage, so the hours run ahead of the miles and the wear sits in brakes, clutch and tipping gear. 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 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 Hot Spring County and the roads out past Gravel Mountain 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.