We buy trucks in Bradley Junction

Four rail yards are filed under Bradley Junction — Imroc, New Wales, Pierce and South Pierce — and they serve an industry rather than a place.

Mosaic’s New Wales plant is the larger of the two fertilizer production plants currently operating in Bone Valley: close to 3 million tons of processed phosphates and 1.4 million tons of phosphoric acid a year, taking phosphate concentrate by rail from the Four Corners beneficiation plant.

Imroc is a name rather than a company. It points at the former International Minerals & Chemical operation, which has not existed in that form for decades and survives in the data as a label. We are reporting it as one rather than writing a page about a company that may not be there.

So the movement pattern is unusually easy to describe. Plant to plant, mine to plant, plant to port. Short legs, repeated, and entirely off the interstate system.

That is a particular kind of work. Many loads a day, low road speed, heavy loading cycles, and a lot of time on surfaces that are not public roads. Hours run well ahead of miles, and the miles that do accumulate are the same few miles over and over.

Bone Valley covers parts of Hardee County, Hillsborough, Manatee and Polk, so the whole of that happens inside a fairly small box — New Wales at one end of it and the port at the other.

Which makes this about the best place in Florida to be holding a divisible-load permit, and the worst place to find out it does not apply to you.

The permit lets FDOT allow ten per cent over legal gross weight, and it is void on the interstate system. Bone Valley hauls never touch one, so the ten per cent is available on every leg — it does more work in this box than almost anywhere in the state.

Then the exclusion. It does not reach a single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker, and Florida caps those at 70,000 lb gross against 80,000 for a combination. That is precisely the truck a one- or two-truck operator is most likely to own, so the benefit lands on the fleets and passes the smallest operators by.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4) and § 316.535(6). Information, not legal advice.

Both of those stop mattering the day the truck changes hands. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.

Everything past that is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. The plate stays in your name and comes off the truck.

Where an insurer has paid a total loss on it, an electronic lien recorded on the title is the thing that actually holds the process up.

Fla. Stat. § 320.0609(1)(a) and § 319.30. Information, not legal advice.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Four Corners and New Wales legs. Tankers off the acid and fuel side of it. Day cabs and road tractors for the run to the port, flatbeds, box trucks, rollbacks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a plant crew.

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 engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• It has never been more than fifteen miles from the plant. Is that a problem?No. A short-radius truck is the normal shape around the New Wales gate and the South Pierce end of the district, and the hours matter more to us than the miles do.
• It carried acid or fertilizer. Does that change anything?Tell us what it carried so nobody is surprised. A tank is usually a separate asset with its own inspection history, and that is worth knowing early.
• 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; where none exists there’s a bonded route.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A haulage contract between the New Wales plant and the port that ended and left one truck with nothing booked for it, parked up at South Pierce with the keys in the office.

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.