Jackson County
A ten-mile circle that crosses a state line
The Jones Pit employs three people and the Imperial Rock Mine up the road employs twelve, working dimension limestone under Anderson Columbia Company. What makes this corner of Jackson County unusual is not the pits. It is the measurement around them.
A ten-mile circle drawn here crosses into Alabama, so the bridge count is taken from every state file with structures inside the radius rather than from Florida’s alone: 51 structures, 49 Florida and 2 Alabama. A page that had quietly used only the Florida file would have described a smaller network than the one a truck actually meets.
Eight of those 49 are coded below legal loads — the highest node rate we have measured anywhere in Florida — and all eight are county-maintained. The nearest is 1.97 miles from the gate.
So the number that gets quoted here is nearly three times too low
So this is another place where the obvious figure would mislead, and worse than usual. The lowest operating rating among those eight crossings is 6.4 metric tonnes.
Most of what is restricted near this pit is rated below the weight of an empty truck. Quote that 6.4 and you would be describing a network no commercial vehicle can enter at all, which is not what happens. The number that actually binds is the lowest rating at or above the commercial floor: 17.2 metric tonnes, set by a structure 9.07 miles out, admitting roughly 6.2 tonnes of stone over an empty tandem’s tare.
Nearly three times the posted minimum. The raw minimum and the commercial floor are different numbers and only the second one is about a truck — and the nearest of the eight is 1.97 miles from the gate, so it is met early and often.
Which is a floor inside a circle, and the circle is a choice
Which comes with a limit worth stating rather than burying. That 17.2 is a minimum inside a ten-mile radius, and ten miles is a decision we made, not a fact about the haul.
At most of the nodes we have measured, a tighter crossing lies between 10 miles and 20 miles out. So the floor is an upper bound on what a longer run will meet, not a promise about it.
Jackson County posts eighteen of the 77 bridges it maintains. The two pits over at Marianna each meet four restrictions in 59 structures; this one meets eight in 49. Three rows in one county, three different answers, and the county tier holding all of it. The panhandle is not the peninsula.
Florida weight law
And under all of it, the truck’s own ceiling
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.
Fla. Stat. § 316.535(6), with § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice.
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 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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Jones Pit and the Imperial Rock Mine, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Log trucks and timber rigs off the panhandle woods. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, box trucks, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a small crew in Jackson 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 Cottondale
- 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 run part loaded over posted bridges for years. Does that show?Not as damage. Around the Jones Pit it shows as more trips for the same tonnage, which is hours rather than miles, and 1.97 miles from the gate means 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.
- 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 pit contract that ended and left one truck standing in Jackson County with nothing booked for it, 1.97 miles from the crossing that set every load it ever carried.
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.