We buy trucks in National City

The Port of San Diego runs its vehicle terminal here and describes it as the primary port of entry for one out of every ten new foreign cars shipped into the United States. Pasha Automotive Services operates it. Most of the brands it processes are cars — but Hino and Mitsubishi Fuso are on that list too, so the berth is a port of entry for medium-duty trucks as well.

It is roll-on, roll-off work, which means units are driven or hauled off the deck rather than lifted. What that puts on the road here is day cabs on short out-and-back runs and car haulers, and both come up for sale with low mileage against a great many hours. Shunting does not show on an odometer.

Those ships and the rail sit on top of each other here. The central list carries a second row 0.22 miles from the first — a BNSF yard filed under the name Honda Terminal Yard, 1.4 miles from the middle of town — and a fifth of a mile apart is not two facilities. It is one waterfront with a track on it.

The name on that row is narrower than the place, too: Honda is one tenant of a multi-brand terminal, so a yard called after it describes a customer rather than what moves through. The same is true of the trucks that work it. What comes off a ro-ro berth is not one make, and neither is what we buy.

That matters here more than it does on most pages, because this is a port on San Diego Bay. Internal-combustion drayage trucks had to be registered in the state’s Truck Regulation Upload, Compliance and Reporting System — TRUCRS — by 31 December 2023; from 1 January 2024 only zero-emission drayage trucks could be newly registered; and a grandfathered truck runs to at least 13 years from its engine model year, up to 18 years or 800,000 miles, whichever comes first.

The point is that this attaches to the truck rather than to the model year. A truck registered before that deadline carries a record an otherwise identical truck cannot now be given, and the record travels with the vehicle. If yours has that history, say so on the form — it is a fact about the truck and it belongs with the year, the make and the hours.

So whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Around the terminal that means day cabs and drayage tractors first, then car haulers off the vehicle berths, box trucks and straight trucks on delivery rounds, flatbeds and dump trucks on yard and groundwork, and pickups everywhere.

San Diego is immediately north and Chula Vista south, with Bonita inland and Imperial Beach and Coronado on the water; all of them carry pages of their own, and all of them sit in San Diego County. 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. Right by the bay we can come to you and drive it away, come to you and tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you can drive it to us. Payment is cash or electronic payment.