Modesto is a valley town with the rail at its centre, Modesto Yard half a mile from downtown, and a dairy county around it: Stanislaus County's farms lead with milk, cattle and corn, and after general freight the cargoes its carriers declare most are fresh produce, refrigerated food and meat. Four in five of the 2,330 carriers based here run inside California only, and the biggest fleets run a few hundred power units, so most trucks belong to small outfits.
So a Modesto yard holds a produce reefer, a milk tanker off the dairies, a dump truck from Hughson Aggregates east of town, a cattle hauler, and the semi truck with a sleeper that runs the long lanes. Manufacturing is the biggest trucking employer in the city, and the Lathrop and Stockton intermodal ramps twenty miles up the valley take the boxes.
Burney Street
The DMV field office at 124 Burney Street handles a duplicate title and the title transfer. The five-day notice of sale, the lien and the state's clean-truck rules are on the California page; the rules that reached fleets have been repealed or paused, and none of them stops the sale of a diesel truck registered here.
A reefer is read through the refrigeration unit, its make and its hours, as much as through the tractor; a pit dump truck through the bed, the frame and the springs. Photograph those first, then the cab, the engine and the odometer, and tell us the dairy route, the pit or the lane it worked.
Seventh Street at the Tuolumne
California holds the federal 80,000 pounds on the interstates and its own axle table on state roads, both on the California page. Modesto's own list is 43 bridges inside the city, one posted for load and one under fourteen feet, the Seventh Street crossing of the Tuolumne River at eleven feet one, so a transfer rig working south of the river has read that sign.
Tell us where the truck is in Modesto, by the yards downtown, out toward Hughson or south of the river, and send photos and the title.