We buy trucks in American Canyon

Napa County’s industry is wine, and wine moves overwhelmingly by road: grapes to the crush, bulk wine between facilities, cased goods out, and glass, barrels and packaging in. Four distinct flows, and every one of them is a truck movement.

That is the useful way to see this valley if you own a truck in it. It is not one seasonal haul, it is a year-round circulation with a hard peak at harvest, and the trailer that carries barrels in is not the one that carries cased goods out.

That road picture is established. What is not established is whether any of it touches the two California Northern yards filed against this city — Lombard Yard and Napa Junction Yard. Their traffic and their customers were not determined.

So we are not going to write that the wine trade moves through them. It may; nothing we hold says so. County industry is county context, and promoting it into yard traffic is precisely the inference this project has been burned by before.

So whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Harvest puts farm trucks and end dumps on the road; bulk wine moves in tankers; cased goods go out in box trucks, straight trucks and refrigerated trailers; and glass, barrels and packaging come in on flatbeds and day cabs.

Napa County is small enough that the same trucks work all of it, and the Napa Valley floor is where most of those movements start. Napa and Vallejo carry pages of their own. Dump trucks and pickups are here for the ordinary reasons, and a truck that has worked a harvest run has hours on it the odometer will not show.

That is state law rather than anything local, and it is the rule truck sellers misquote most often. CVC sections 35550 to 35558 set a statutory range of 34,000 to 80,000 lb by axle count and spacing, and § 35551(a) is a table rather than the federal Bridge Formula — no formula is declared in the statute at all.

The California table does not exactly match the Federal Bridge Table, including at three and four axles. So a configuration that is legal under one can be over under the other, and “it makes bridge formula” is a claim about which table you mean. If someone has told you your truck makes it, that is worth knowing before you repeat it.

Does it have to run? No. But we buy complete trucks — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. A missing bumper is nothing.

Do I need the title? We need a title, unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. If it is lost, that is a replacement through the DMV and we will walk you through it. If there is a lien on it, say so on the form — that is why the question asks whether the title is in hand rather than whether you own the truck, because those are different situations and they go different ways.

What if it has been in a wreck? Tell us what happened and we will look at it as it is. California sets no percentage: CVC § 544 makes it a judgement about whether repair is economical, so nothing is decided by a formula before we have seen the truck.

How does it get collected, and how am I paid? There is no clock on any of this. 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. Payment is cash or electronic payment.