We buy trucks in Pocahontas

Capital Quarries Company works the quarry here with four people, 2.70 miles from the middle of town. Eight of the 89 structures within ten miles are coded below legal loads — and only one of the eight is county-maintained.

That is because this county posts one of the fifty-nine bridges it holds. One. It is the lowest rate measured anywhere in this state, and it means almost every sign a truck meets around here belongs to somebody else.

Those other signs belong to the state, and across Randolph County that changes something practical rather than something abstract. A county road department is a telephone call: a local office, a local engineer, a road somebody there drives. A state highway posting is a different proposition entirely, handled at a distance and on a different timescale.

The crossing that governs a load out of this pit is a state highway rated at 14.5 metric tonnes, admitting about 3.5 tonnes of stone over the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump. Six of the fifty-four quarry networks measured in this state are capped by a state highway, more than in any other state measured, and the Capital Quarries Company pit here is one of them.

So a driver here is planning around a network they cannot easily ask about. Knowing which crossings those are is most of the job.

FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Arkansas file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.

Those crossings 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.

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. 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 Randolph 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 that Capital Quarries Company runs, a farm lane, or a shop yard that sees neither.

• 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 Randolph County, including the roads Capital Quarries Company runs its stone over.
• 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.
• Does a posting near me affect what the truck is to you?No. What a road is rated for is a fact about the road, not about your truck. Where it ran matters to us for wear — hill work, part loads, stop-start running all leave marks — and not for whether we want it.

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 Randolph County and the roads Capital Quarries Company hauls over 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.