We buy trucks in Stuttgart

Riceland Foods has its head office in this town, and is recorded as the largest rice miller and marketer in the world. Rice mills and warehouses line the railroad tracks through the place, and a Union Pacific yard sits 1.91 miles from the centre.

The company moves grain by rail, by barge and by truck, fanning out from its elevators and meeting ships at Mississippi River ports for export.

Three ways out, and only one of them starts in a field.

That one is the truck’s. Rice goes from the field to an elevator by road before it becomes something a railcar or a barge can take, so the haulage that matters here sits at the front of the chain, on farm lanes and county roads rather than on highways — the Union Pacific cars and the Mississippi River barges only take it once a truck has already moved it.

It is also sharply seasonal. Harvest is a few hard weeks and then very little, so a grain truck around here can stand most of the year and then be asked for everything it has. That leaves its own marks — seals dry out, batteries flatten, air systems weep, tyres take a set — and none of them is a fault. It is what a seasonal truck looks like, and near the Riceland Foods elevators it is most of what there is.

When it does run loaded, the state weight statute is the ceiling, 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.

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. Farm trucks and grain hauls, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a rice-country 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 a farm, a Riceland Foods elevator yard, or the ground beside the Union Pacific tracks where the mills stand.

• It only works a few weeks a year. Is that against it?No, and it is the normal pattern here. A truck that stands most of the year has its own wear and none of it stops a sale so long as it is all there. We come to you and drive it away, tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or take it if you drive it to us — out to the farms and in around the Riceland Foods elevators and the Union Pacific yard alike.
• 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 is a farm-plated truck rather than a commercial one.We buy those too. How a truck was plated and how it was used are two different things, and neither decides whether we are interested. Tell us what it actually did and we will take it from there.

Those answers matter more than the tonnage does, because the reasons behind the call are ordinary. Retiring. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. A farm changing hands, or a hauler coming off the harvest run for good. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.

Out among the rice fields and in along the Union Pacific tracks toward the Riceland Foods mills, 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.