We buy trucks in Carson

The Union Pacific Intermodal Container Transfer Facility was built here in 1986, sits about five miles from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach next to the Interstate 405 and 710 interchange, and performed 710,000 rail lifts in 2007. The word that matters in its name is near-dock.

A near-dock facility is not on the wharf. Every container it handles is drayed to it by truck, which is the plainest statement anywhere in our data of why this stretch of road carries the tractor traffic it does. The boxes go out by rail; they arrive by road.

That rail connection runs down the Alameda Corridor, a 16.1-mile grade-separated route to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In the first quarter of 2024 it handled an average of 31 trains per day against a maximum capacity of more than 150 train trips a day, and its initial target of 100 trains a day has not yet been realised.

We are not going to tell you what that means for the next ten years, because nobody in our sources does. What it means today is that the road share here is not a temporary condition waiting on a rail project — the rail capacity already exists and is not being used to its limit.

So whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Drayage between here and the Long Beach and Los Angeles terminals puts day cabs and road tractors on these roads in numbers, the refining and fuel belt puts tankers on them, and the warehouse floor puts box trucks, straight trucks and flatbeds on them. Pickups and work trucks are everywhere.

Two notes on the data rather than the road. The transfer facility’s own row has a coordinate falling inside Los Angeles city even though it is filed here, and both cities carry pages. And one row named Germ Co Yard is a source-layer label whose meaning was never determined — we do not read it as an operator and neither should anything built on it.

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.