We buy trucks in Gonzales

MSHA records 7 employees at the Handley Ranch Quarry, whose coordinates lie 4.16 miles from the centroid of this place, in Monterey County. Seven people is a small crew working stone next to a valley that mostly grows things, which is a fair description of the truck mix around here as well.

A crew that size runs the same few trucks for years. When one is sold, what it hauled and how far matters more than the year on the door, and it is worth putting on the form.

Those loads meet no recorded restriction at all. Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 9 structures, and not one of them is coded posted for load on item 41 or below legal loads on item 70. That is a measured zero rather than a missing record, and we would rather say which it is.

Read it with the network size in mind, though. Nine structures is a thin network, and a clean sheet across nine says less than a clean sheet across four hundred would. The other thing worth knowing is who does the restricting in this state when anything is restricted: of the 38 structures coded below legal loads near the twenty California nodes measured in one batch, 37 were county-maintained. If you hit a posting here, the county is the tier to ring, and here that county is Monterey County.

So whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Down the Salinas Valley that means farm trucks and grain hauls first, flatbeds and day cabs hauling produce, the quarry’s dump trucks and aggregate haulers, box trucks on distribution, and pickups and work trucks everywhere.

Soledad and Chualar are either side of here, with Salinas and King City further out; all four carry pages of their own. It is the same form whichever one you start on.

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. Here we usually come to you and either drive it away or tow it; we also buy remotely and arrange the tow, and you can drive it to us. Payment is cash or electronic payment.