We buy trucks in Port Hueneme

This is the only deep-water harbour between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It handled 409,004 automobile units in its highest year on record and moves around 1.6 million metric tons of cargo a year.

A harbour with no near neighbour does not behave like one inside a port range. What lands here has to leave here, and most of what leaves a vehicle and produce port leaves on wheels.

That harbour shares its ground with a naval base built for construction battalions — the Seabees, from Construction Battalion, first staged and supplied here as a temporary depot early in the Second World War. It gives the Pacific Fleet a deep-water port, a rail head and an airfield in one package.

A construction-battalion base is a plant-and-heavy-equipment base by definition, which makes it the closest thing in our data to a site whose own business is the kind of machinery this trade deals in. What is actually staged there was not established, and that last sentence is an inference from the base’s stated purpose rather than a fact we hold. We are labelling it as one.

So whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Around a vehicle harbour and an equipment base the mix runs to flatbeds and lowboys moving plant, car haulers off the ships, day cabs on the short county runs, box trucks and straight trucks on distribution, and pickups and work trucks everywhere.

One curiosity in the data, because it is the sort of thing that looks like an error and is not. A row filed against this city resolves 65.51 miles away, the longest resolution anywhere in this slice — and it is correct, because San Nicolas Island is genuinely 60 miles offshore and belongs to this base. A long distance is not automatically a mistake, and this is the case that proves it.

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. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us. Payment is cash or electronic payment.