We buy trucks in Clewiston

Two registrations are filed under Clewiston and they fail in opposite directions, which is unusual enough to be worth the whole opening.

The Big Cypress Rock Mine, 3 people, sits 30.43 miles from the centre of Clewiston at the western edge of Broward County. Its city field is an office address rather than a location. Ridgdill & Son, 10 people, sits 0.36 miles from the centre of Clewiston — correct to within a few hundred yards — but the node list files it to Glades County while the coordinate returns Hendry, and Clewiston is in Hendry.

So on one row the city is wrong and the county and coordinate agree; on the other the county is wrong and the city and coordinate agree. Two rows, two different fields, and in each case the other two broke the tie. That is luck rather than method, and we publish what the coordinate says and name the disagreement rather than pretending the file settled it.

So the first of those rows produces a number that looks impossible until you see where it sits. Six structures of any kind lie within ten miles of the Big Cypress Rock Mine, and none is posted or coded below legal loads — in Broward County, which is one of the most urbanised counties in Florida and posts three of the 90 bridges it maintains.

The reason is that the pit is at the county’s western edge against the Everglades, so most of its ten-mile circle is water conservation area rather than road network. The circle is what gets measured, not the county.

A county figure and a ten-mile figure can disagree by two orders of magnitude inside one county, and here they do. Neither is wrong; they are answers to different questions.

Which the other registration demonstrates in reverse. Within ten miles of Ridgdill & Son the National Bridge Inventory records 20 structures: three are posted for load and one is coded below legal loads, the nearest 8.86 miles out.

That one is rated 17.0 metric tonnes, and after the tare of an empty tandem dump it admits about six tonnes of stone — the tightest admission anywhere in this lane. A truck meeting it goes over part loaded or goes round.

Two pits inside the same district, thirty miles apart, and one meets nothing while the other meets the narrowest crossing we have measured in Florida. That is the level at which a route actually gets decided.

Both of those crossings sit under a limit that travels with the vehicle rather than the road.

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 gross, against 80,000 lb for a combination including all enforcement tolerances. The divisible-load permit that adds ten per cent off the interstate system does not reach those vehicles at all — and in the Everglades Agricultural Area, where almost nothing is interstate mileage, that exclusion is the whole of the difference.

Fla. Stat. § 316.535(6), with § 316.550(4). 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.

On a farm or pit fleet the question to settle early is which machines were ever road-registered, because for those it is a title question before it is a condition question.

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

All of it is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off Ridgdill & Son and the Big Cypress Rock Mine, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Cane and field trucks off the Canal Point end of the district. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, box trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a 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.
• The paperwork says one county and the yard is in another. Does that stop a sale?No. We have two registrations filed under this town with two different fields wrong, so it is not even unusual — Ridgdill & Son is a case in point. We work from where the truck actually is.
• It has crossed a narrow bridge part loaded for years. Does that show?Not as damage. It shows as more trips for the same tonnage, which is hours rather than miles, and at 8.86 miles out from a Hendry County yard it happened every working day.
• 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 rock contract that ended and left one truck standing at Ridgdill & Son, or 30.43 miles away at the Big Cypress Rock Mine, with nothing booked for it.

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.