We buy trucks in Willits

Harris Quarry, run by Northern Aggregates Inc, carries nine people on the MSHA roll and sits 5.09 miles from the city centroid. Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records 78 structures, of which two are posted for load and two coded below legal loads — 2.6 percent, and only one of the two is county-maintained.

The binding one is not. It is NBI record 10C0198 carrying E Valley St, and item 21 codes its maintenance to a city or municipal highway agency. It is rated 15.9 metric tonnes, about 17.5 US tons, 5.41 miles out; over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump that admits roughly 4.9 tonnes of stone. Mendocino County posts six of the 129 bridges it maintains.

Whatever you drive, the offer does not change — we buy all of them. Ukiah, Fort Bragg and Laytonville carry pages of their own if the truck lives closer to one of those. The mix up here runs to timber and rock: log trucks and dump trucks on the woods and quarry side, flatbeds and day cabs on haulage down the 101, box trucks on delivery, and pickups and work trucks everywhere.

That is the fourth city-maintained binding crossing this survey has found anywhere, and the second outside Florida — after a quarry in Los Angeles County in the same batch. The first three were in Palm Beach, Taylor and Dixie counties.

Which is less of an oddity in this state than the count suggests. California’s cities hold 19.6 percent of the state’s structures, the largest municipal tier this survey has met, against 47.9 percent held at state level and 28.3 percent by counties. So a cap set by a city is a normal thing here, and checking only what the county posts would miss the crossing that actually governs a loaded truck out of this quarry.

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.

That is the same code book that decides what a wreck does to your title, and it asks a question instead of setting a number. CVC § 544 makes a truck a total loss salvage vehicle when the owner, a leasing company, a financial institution or an insurer considers it uneconomical to repair and it is then not repaired.

So the figure people quote at you — 70 to 75 percent of actual cash value — comes from insurer practice and not from the vehicle code. It is worth knowing which of the two you are being told, because one of them is law and the other is a company’s own policy.

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. California has no numeric total-loss threshold at all — CVC § 544 asks whether repair is economical and leaves the judgement to the owner, the lender or the insurer — so no percentage decides anything here before we have looked.

How does it get collected, and how am I paid? However it goes, there is no clock on it: 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.