We buy trucks in Yellville

Two limestone quarries are registered to this town. APAC-Central works Hard Rock Quarry with two people, 5.89 miles from the centre. The other, 2.95 miles out, is registered to the county road department itself and carries five.

A county running its own pit is ordinary enough — road departments have always needed stone and it is cheaper to dig it than buy it. What is not ordinary is what happens to the loads coming out of it.

That pit is capped at about eight hundred kilograms of stone. Ten of the 49 structures within ten miles of it are coded below legal loads — 20.4%, six of them county-maintained — the nearest is 0.59 miles from the gate, and the crossing that binds is a county road rated at 11.8 metric tonnes against the eleven-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump.

So the road that decides the load is maintained and posted by the same body that holds the quarry registration. That is a statement about who holds what, and nothing more: there is no basis here for saying the same people made both decisions, or that the posting has anything to do with the pit, and this page does not say either.

Hard Rock Quarry five miles away lands in the same place from a different network — 17.8% restricted across 45 structures, and the same 11.8-tonne floor admitting the same eight hundred kilograms. Two pits in one county, both capped about as tightly as a loaded truck can be. Marion County posts seven of the twenty-two bridges it maintains.

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

Those postings are one half of the ceiling. The statute is the other, and on a three-axle truck it arrives before any sign does.

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 Marion 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 pit roads near Hard Rock Quarry, 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 Marion County, including the roads around Hard Rock 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 never ran full because of the bridges.That is the normal story here and it is not a mark against a truck. Running part-loaded is easier on a driveline than people assume, though it means more trips for the same tonnage, so the hours often run ahead of the miles. Tell us both if the meter has them.

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 or a haulage contract winding down. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it doesn’t turn a wheel.

Around Marion County and the roads out past Hard Rock 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.