Cement again
A hundred and thirty-three people at a cement operation on the edge of town
MSHA records 133 employees at the Black Mountain Quarry, carried as a cement operation with CEMEX Construction Materials Pacific as operator of record. For a high desert town that is a substantial industrial employer rather than a name on a list.
Cement and aggregate are the most road-bound trades there are at the outbound end. Whatever arrives by other means, what leaves a plant for a job site leaves on a truck.
That plant is one of several inside one county
That operation is not alone. Four cement plants sit in San Bernardino County and three more over in Kern, making this the densest such concentration in the western United States — and it is a desert limestone belt rather than a river or coastal one.
The market for all of them is largely on the other side of a mountain. The Cajon Pass sits between this high desert and greater Los Angeles, which makes the haul a sustained grade run rather than flat urban distribution.
What runs here
Grade work is what wears a truck out here
So whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Cement and aggregate put dump trucks, mixers, aggregate haulers and pneumatic tanks on these roads, with flatbeds serving the plants and day cabs running loads down the hill.
The plants in this belt sit between 2,500 and 4,000 ft, so brakes, cooling and driveline take the load in a way flat running does not — a property of the route rather than a claim about anybody’s equipment. Victorville and Hesperia carry pages of their own and the same San Bernardino County work runs across all of them.
California weight law
The weight table here is not the federal one
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.
Questions we actually get
The four that come up every time
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.
Sell your truck in Apple Valley
Apple Valley, Victorville, Hesperia and the high desert around them. Tell us what you have and we will take it from there.
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