We buy trucks in Lone Pine

The Dolomite Mine is a surface operation run by F W Aggregate Inc, with 5 employees on the MSHA record, and its coordinates lie 8.02 miles from the Census 2024 Gazetteer centroid of this place. Its name and its filing do not quite agree: the commodity of record is crushed and broken marble, not dolomite. We are reporting that rather than resolving it, because we did not establish which is the current working stone.

Eight miles out in the Owens Valley is not eight miles in a city. A five-person mine at that distance runs a handful of trucks a long way on hard ground, and when one is sold the useful facts are what it hauled and what has been replaced — not the number on the odometer, which out here gets large without meaning much.

Those hauls meet nothing on the record. Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 8 structures, and not one is coded posted for load on item 41 or below legal loads on item 70. But eight structures is about as thin a network as this file contains, and a clean sheet across eight says very little.

Inyo County makes the point better than the number does. It maintains 33 bridges and posts none of them, across a county of more than ten thousand square miles — larger than nine US states. Thirty-three bridges spread over that is not a road network so much as a few crossings on a very long drive, and a posting rate calculated from it is not a figure about anything your truck will actually meet. We would rather tell you that than dress the zero up.

Those distances change how this works, so start with the practical part: out here we most often buy the truck remotely and arrange the tow. That is the normal path in the Owens Valley rather than a fallback, and it does not cost you anything or make the deal any less firm. We can also come to you and drive it away or tow it, and you are welcome to drive it to us.

Whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Along US 395 that means the mine’s dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds and work trucks on ranch and utility work, box trucks on the long supply runs, and pickups everywhere. Independence and Cartago are the near towns, with Big Pine and Bishop further up the valley; all four carry pages of their own.

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