A plant named for one town and filed under another
Two registrations sit under Coleman, and neither of them is called Coleman. The Sumterville Cement Plant employs 139 people; the Sumterville Mine next to it employs 21, and its coordinate is just under four miles from the middle of town.
The operator of record on the plant is Suwannee American Cement — the same company that runs the plant at Branford, 90 miles north. The data spells it two ways across its rows, once in title case and once in capitals, which is a filing artefact rather than two companies.
We say all of that plainly because a page that treated Sumterville and Coleman as two separate places, or the two spellings as two operators, would be inventing detail out of a formatting difference.
So the map says clear here and the roadside does not
So the road network is the thing worth reading carefully, and around the Sumterville Mine it needs reading twice.
Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records 72 structures. Not one is coded below legal loads, so on that measure there is no weight floor to report at all. But two of them are posted for load.
Those are two different fields and Florida disagrees between them more than any state we have measured: 819 structures posted against 579 coded below legal loads. What it means on the ground is that a driver meets a sign at a crossing this measurement holds no cap for, so we report both counts rather than calling the place clear.
Florida weight law
And the corridor that looks fastest is the one the permit forbids
Those short runs are exactly what Florida’s divisible-load permit is for, and Coleman sits in the one place where that becomes awkward.
The permit lets FDOT allow ten per cent over legal gross weight, off the interstate system only. Coleman is on the I-75 corridor. So a permitted tanker running ten per cent over has to stay off the road that runs past the plant gate, and the obvious route and the permitted weight pull in opposite directions.
The exclusion bites too: the ten per cent never reaches a single-unit dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker, which Florida holds to 70,000 lb gross against 80,000 lb for a combination.
Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4), with § 316.535(6). Information, not legal advice.
Florida paperwork
We need a title — unless the truck never had one
Those rules 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 plate is the Florida detail people miss: 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. Bulk cement tankers off the Sumterville Cement Plant. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Sumterville Mine, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Mixers, day cabs and road tractors, 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.
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 Coleman
- 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 only ever ran plant to site. Does that count against it?No. Short-radius work out of the Sumterville Cement Plant is the normal shape here, and it shows in hours rather than in the 70,000 lb the truck was allowed to carry.
- 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 contract that ended and left one tanker standing at the Sumterville Cement Plant gate, or at the Sumterville Mine up the road, 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.