We buy trucks in West Memphis

This city sits directly across the river from Memphis, at the point where two interstates intersect, and it is a major trucking hub: thousands of commercial vehicles pass through daily. One of those roads runs from California to North Carolina, the other from New Orleans to Chicago.

A rail yard sits 2.73 miles from the centre, and Amazon runs a fulfilment centre here among a good many other logistics operations.

A crossroads of that size changes what a truck here has done with its life.

That is because this is through-freight country rather than short-haul country. The equipment around a crossing like this one is highway equipment: sleepers, road tractors, dry vans and reefers, and the mileage that comes of running a thousand miles at a time rather than ten.

High mileage is not the mark against a truck people assume. A highway tractor that has run steady long legs is often in better order than a local unit with a third of the miles, because it has spent its life at temperature rather than cold-starting six times a day — the difference between running to North Carolina and running 2.73 miles to a yard and back. What we look at on those is the driveline and the service history, not the odometer reading on its own.

Across Crittenden County the other half of the picture is the yards: distribution work, drayage and the short local runs that feed them, which wear in the opposite places.

Whichever kind it is, the state weight statute is what governed it on these roads, 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. Day cabs and road tractors, sleepers, flatbeds, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, tankers, rollbacks and car haulers, 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 Crittenden 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 here comes off a distribution yard, a truck stop lot, or a driveway 2.73 miles from the rail yard where somebody parked it for the last time.

• It has a million miles on it. Would you even look at it?Yes. High mileage on a highway tractor is ordinary here and it is not what decides an offer. 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 Crittenden County and around the yards 2.73 miles out.
• 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.
• I am an owner-operator stopping, not a fleet.Most of the people we buy from are exactly that. One truck is a normal transaction for us, and the process is the same as for twenty.

Those answers matter more than the traffic does, because the reasons behind the call are ordinary. Retiring. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. An authority handed back, or a contract that ended. A truck standing on a lot since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.

Around Crittenden County and the yards within 2.73 miles of the tracks 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.