We buy trucks in Marble

Marble sits in Gunnison County and carries one row, working 20 employees on dimension marble. It is an underground operation, which is unusual: across the whole survey behind these pages only two marble sites work underground, and this is one of them.

The stone itself was named this state’s official rock in 2004. It went to Washington for the Lincoln Memorial between 1914 and 1916, and the company then working it cut some of the largest marble blocks ever quarried.

Twenty people is a small operation and marble is a slow product. What comes off ground like this is flatbeds and heavy haul rather than a fleet of tippers, and the machines involved are kept a long time.

That history produces a figure everyone repeats, and it needs care. The block cut for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier weighed 124 tons — about 248,000 lb — and its 56-ton middle section was lifted out in January 1931.

Those are the dimensions of a specific historical event, not a description of what this quarry does now. Elsewhere a page might read a maximum block weight as current practice; here the number belongs to one block cut for one monument nearly a century ago, and what a present-day block from this ground weighs was not established.

It is worth the distinction because it changes what you would expect on the road. A 124 tons block implies specialised heavy haul; twenty people cutting stone today implies ordinary flatbed work. This page claims the second and records the first as history.

Beyond the stone there is an ownership question this page will not resolve. The operator name on file is a division name created after an acquisition in April 2004. That quarry then closed in December 2009 in the economic crisis, and later trade reporting describes it reopening under an Italian owner.

So the name in the record may be a division name that persisted through a change of ownership. That is not established either way, and this page states neither version as fact.

What is established is the string on the record, the 20 employees, the underground working and Gunnison County. The wider lesson, which recurs across this research, is that these files record an operating entity, and an entity name can outlive the ownership that made it.

Whoever owns the ground, two state rules reach the sale of a truck off it, and one of them marks the vehicle 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. Flatbeds and heavy haul off the quarry and its 20 employees. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers. Day cabs and road tractors working down the valley out of Gunnison County.

Box trucks, straight trucks, rollbacks, sleepers, tankers, car haulers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups too — not a stone 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.
• The deck has taken a beating from blocks.Expected on stone haulage and not a disqualifier. Point loads mark a deck faster than anything else. Tell us whether the frame took any of it.
• It is an old truck on a twenty-person operation.Common here. 20 employees means a handful of machines kept a long time, and long ownership with modest distance is the normal pattern rather than a warning sign.
• 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.
• Will you come up the valley for it?We will, and we also buy remotely and arrange the tow with nobody driving up at all. In Gunnison County that second route is often the quicker one.
• 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 stone contract finishing and the flatbed that served it having nowhere to go next.

On a site with 20 employees there is rarely a second machine to absorb the work, so a truck in Gunnison County tends to stop the same week the reason arrives, and then stand a long time because the nearest buyer is a long way off.

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.