Levy County
Two true numbers about bridges that are not about the same thing
The Levy County Pit sits about a mile from the middle of Bronson and employs five people. Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records six structures in total, and not one of them is posted for load or coded below legal loads.
Levy County, meanwhile, posts nine of the 28 bridges it maintains — 32.1 per cent, one of the higher rates in the state.
Both figures are correct and they are not measuring the same thing. The county rate covers bridges the county maintains anywhere inside it; the six are whatever happens to fall in a ten-mile circle drawn around one pit. Here the two are not even close, and quoting the county figure as though it described this pit’s route would be describing a different set of bridges.
So what limits a haul out here is distance, not a rating
So the constraint is not a number painted on a crossing. It is distance, and which way out exists.
Levy County sits in the middle of the north-central limestone belt, with Alachua, Marion and Suwannee, and that belt holds the eight thinnest road networks we have measured in fifteen states — the Levy County Pit among them. Thin does not mean easy. It means long hauls over two-lane roads to Gainesville, Ocala and the coast, with very little to divert onto if one of them is shut.
What that does to a truck is steady road time rather than stop-start, and a great deal of it. You know better than we do how those surfaces treat a suspension over a few years.
Florida weight law
Which leaves the truck’s own ceiling doing the work
Which leaves the ceiling written into the truck, because nothing on this network is going to impose a lower one.
Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and 20,000 lb on a single axle. A single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker may not exceed 70,000 lb. The divisible-load permit that adds ten per cent is void on the interstate system and does not reach those vehicles at all.
Fla. Stat. § 316.535 and § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the state rule file was last verified.
Florida paperwork
We need a title — unless the truck never had one
Those numbers stop mattering the day the truck changes hands, and the paperwork is what is left.
A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither is unusual and neither stops a sale.
The Florida detail people miss is the plate. It stays in the owner’s name and comes off the truck, to be moved to another vehicle of the same class or surrendered to the county tax collector.
Fla. Stat. § 320.0609(1)(a). Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
All of it is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the limerock work. Flatbeds and day cabs for the run to Gainesville. Box trucks and straight trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a small crew in Levy County.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
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. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Bronson
- 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.
- Do you come out this far?Yes, and where it makes more sense we buy the truck where it stands and arrange the tow instead. Either way the drive out to Levy County is not something you need to solve, whether the truck is an 80,000 lb combination or a 70,000 lb single-unit.
- 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.
Why people call
Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A small outfit in Levy County winding down with one truck still on the yard, a mile from the Levy County Pit it worked out of.
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.