We buy trucks in Subiaco

Rainbow Stone Company works a dimension stone quarry here with five people. Dimension stone is cut and shipped as blocks and slabs rather than crushed and tipped, which makes it a different trade from the aggregate pits that fill most of this state’s register.

It is also the same operator working a second dimension stone quarry over in Franklin County, so this is a small company running more than one face rather than a single pit.

What both send out is the same shape of load.

That shape is a flat deck with point loads on it, strapped down. A block of cut stone concentrates its weight where it sits rather than spreading down a body the way loose aggregate does, so it works the deck and the frame beneath it hard, and it works them in specific places.

It also means the trucks here are not tippers. A dimension stone yard runs flatbeds and the equipment to load them, which is a different second-hand market from a quarry selling off a dump truck. Around Logan County, where the county posts twenty of the sixty-three bridges it maintains, a Rainbow Stone Company flatbed and a tipper meet the same signs on the way out.

Both kinds meet the same ceiling once they reach the road, because the state weight statute is keyed to the vehicle rather than the cargo, 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. Flatbeds, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, 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 Logan 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 Rainbow Stone Company yard, a valley farm, or a shop lot that sees neither.

• Will you come out to a place this small?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 Logan County, including the Rainbow Stone Company ground.
• 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.
• The deck is dented and scored from stone blocks.Expected, and not a disqualifier. That is what a stone flatbed looks like after a working life. What we want to know is whether the frame under it is straight and whether anything has been cut out of it — that is the part that matters.

Those answers matter more than the stone does, because the reasons behind the call are ordinary. Retiring. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. A small yard 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 Logan County and the roads out past the Rainbow Stone Company yard 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.