We buy trucks in Lyons

Lyons sits in Boulder County and carries one row: a cement plant working 89 employees, operated by CEMEX Construction Materials South. For a town this size that is the dominant employer rather than one of several.

A cement plant is a particular kind of neighbour for a truck market. It runs on a schedule that does not follow the construction calendar closely, because a kiln is expensive to stop and start, so the haulage around it is steadier than a quarry’s.

The product goes out by mixer and by bulk tanker, and it goes out by road, because there is no navigable water anywhere in this state and no barge alternative to fall back on when a week goes badly.

That single row comes with the same honest limitation several of these pages carry. It is filed to this town because a source named the town, not because a coordinate was resolved against it, so no measured distance from the middle of Lyons to the plant exists.

Elsewhere on this list the figure is there and is stated — 1.49 miles at Florence, 0.82 at Longmont — and where it is absent this page says so instead of estimating. A plausible number would read exactly like a measured one, which is the problem with it.

What is established is the operator, the commodity and the 89 employees on it. That is enough to describe the trucking without pretending to a precision the record does not have.

That steadiness is the thing to understand about a machine from here. Cement work runs all day, fully loaded, over legs that are usually short, so load cycles and engine hours accumulate at a rate the odometer never records.

A mixer is harder still on specific parts. The drum, the drive and the water system work continuously whether the truck is moving or not, and the chassis carries an awkward high load that puts everything through the suspension.

So on a truck off an 89 employees plant in Boulder County we look at hours, drum condition and the running gear before we look at distance. A modest reading on the clock here does not mean a lightly used machine, and a large one does not mean a tired one.

Whatever it carried, two state rules reach the sale, and one of them marks the vehicle itself rather than the paperwork.

Colorado’s salvage rule is physical. Under C.R.S. § 42-6-136.5 a purchaser of a vehicle that has become salvage must apply for a salvage certificate of title, and an owner who makes one roadworthy again needs a certified VIN inspection under § 42-5-202. To pass that inspection the applicant has to stamp the vehicle with a brand reading Rebuilt From Salvage, each letter not less than a quarter of an inch high.

The designation then becomes a permanent part of the certificate of title and appears on every title issued for that vehicle afterwards. Two forms carry it: DR 2415 establishes a rebuilt title from a salvage title, and DR 2424 is the statement of facts. In Colorado the history does not come off, and it is not only on paper.

What the threshold for becoming salvage is, we do not state. The central rule file identifies § 42-6-102 and records that it was not read, so no Colorado percentage appears here. The gross and axle schedule is not in that file either, and neither is the chain law, which for a mountain state is the gap worth naming rather than filling.

One thing worth correcting, because it reaches trucks and is usually reported the wrong way round. Colorado adopted Advanced Clean Trucks as the eighth state, applying from model year 2027 and growing through model year 2035, and it has been under challenge since the June 2025 repeal of California’s federal waivers. It is a manufacturer sales standard. It does not require a fleet, an owner, an operator or a dealership to buy a zero-emission vehicle, and it puts no deadline on anybody’s diesel.

C.R.S. § 42-6-136.5 and § 42-5-202, with Colorado DMV forms DR 2415 and DR 2424, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment on Advanced Clean Trucks. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the day those were read.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Mixers and bulk tankers off the CEMEX Construction Materials South plant. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers. Day cabs and road tractors.

Box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, sleepers, car haulers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups too — not a Boulder County thing in particular, they run everywhere.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Rust is not a disqualifier.
• It is a mixer. Do you take those?Yes. Mixers, bulk tankers, tandem dumps, day cabs — we buy all of them and the type does not change the offer.
• Enormous hours, hardly any miles.That is the cement pattern exactly. An 89 employees plant runs its trucks continuously over short legs, so hours pile up on a machine that has barely travelled. Not a problem here.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route.
• The drum is worn.Expected and not a disqualifier. What matters is that the truck is complete, not that every component is fresh.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.

Beyond a truck that has simply done the work, the reasons here are ordinary ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A hauling contract off the plant ending and the mixer that served it having nowhere to go next.

In a town where one operation employs 89 employees, most of the rest of the vehicles belong to trades and individuals, and yards across Boulder County usually have one standing that never got its next job.

Most of those aren’t happy reasons, and we don’t treat them like they are. Somebody wants a straight answer and the truck gone by the end of the week. That’s what we’re here for.