We buy trucks in Branford

Three registrations sit within five miles of Branford: the Suwannee American Cement plant with 97 people, a quarry of the same name with 9, and the Beachville Mine with 8. The trucks that come off all three are bulk tankers and stone haulers.

Which brings up the most unusual thing about Florida’s weight law, and it is unusual in a way that helps you. Most states that grant relief grant it by named commodity: Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Mississippi all publish a list, Texas writes permits for named industries, Indiana does it by road designation and Wisconsin by season.

Florida names nothing. It grants a general divisible-load permit instead, and a divisible load is simply one that could be split — which sand, aggregate, cement and crushed stone are the definitional cases of. So the loads coming out of Branford are inside the relief without ever appearing on a list.

So the condition attached to it is not about what is in the trailer. It is about which road you are on, and about how the truck is built.

The permit is void on the interstate system. Branford sits on the I-75 corridor, which is exactly the road a loaded tanker would otherwise take — so the permit and the obvious route are in direct tension here, and a permitted truck running ten per cent over has to stay off the one road that looks fastest.

The second condition is sharper. The ten per cent does not reach a single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker. Kansas does the opposite and requires a dump semitrailer combination before it grants anything. Both states make the body type decisive; one by including it and one by leaving it out.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4), with § 316.535(5) and (6). Information, not legal advice.

Which leaves the bridges, and around Branford there are barely any to speak of. Ten structures of any kind lie within ten miles of the Beachville Mine and twelve within ten miles of the cement plant, and not one of them is posted for load or coded below legal loads.

Suwannee County maintains eleven bridges in total and posts one. This is the north-central limestone belt, which holds the eight thinnest road networks we have measured in fifteen states.

None of that makes a haul easy. It makes it long. Route choice here is about distance and which way out exists rather than about what a crossing is rated at.

Those rules stop mattering the day the truck changes hands, and one Florida figure is worth understanding before you assume anything about a branded title.

A vehicle is salvage here where the cost of repair reaches 80 per cent of the cost to replace it with a vehicle of like kind and quality. Missouri also uses 80 per cent — and it is not the same test, because Missouri measures fair market value and Florida measures what it costs to replace the truck. On an older commercial vehicle those two numbers diverge sharply.

The seller-facing part is one sentence. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one; a lost one has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route.

Fla. Stat. § 319.30(3)(a). Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy. Bulk cement tankers off the plant. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Beachville Mine and the pit next to it. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, box trucks, rollbacks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew in Suwannee County.

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 is a single-unit tanker, so the permit never applied to it. Does that hurt the truck?Not with us. The exclusion is a fact about Suwannee County road law, not about the vehicle’s condition — a 70,000 lb single-unit and an 80,000 lb combination get the same reading from us.
• 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.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A haul contract that ended and left one tanker standing in Suwannee County with nothing booked for it, or a dump truck idle at the Beachville Mine gate.

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.