We buy trucks in McCloud

This is a lumber company town on the southern slope of Mount Shasta, at about 3,500 feet, in Siskiyou County, and the railroad in the yard here was its logging railroad. That is the shape of the place: a mill town built around getting timber down off a mountain, with a railway put in to do it.

We could not establish whether that railway is still operating. No facility-level source was found for the yard, and the carrier name on the row is a label from the source layer rather than evidence of current traffic. So we are not going to tell you how much moves through it — if you work out of that yard you know better than the file does.

Those logging origins bring up the question timber sellers ask us most. California publishes a separate log-hauler exemption from its ordinary weight limits — it exists, and we have seen it referred to — but it is not extracted into the state rule file we work from, and we did not determine its terms. This is the third California timber node where that same gap applies, and it applies in Siskiyou County exactly as it does anywhere else in the state.

That is a gap and we are calling it one rather than guessing at the numbers. If your truck ran timber off Mount Shasta under a log-hauler exemption, tell us what it ran under and we will work from what you know. Getting an exemption wrong in either direction is worse than saying we have not established it.

Those distances shape how this works, so take the practical part first: up here we often buy the truck remotely and arrange the tow. That is a normal path on the mountain rather than a fallback, and it costs you nothing. 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. Around the mountain that means log trucks and timber rigs first, then dump trucks and flatbeds on forest and county road work, box trucks on the long supply runs, and pickups and work trucks everywhere. Mount Shasta and Dunsmuir are down the hill, with Weed north, Castella south and Yreka further on through Siskiyou County; all of them 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. Up the mountain we often 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.