We buy trucks in Dania Beach

Florida has no refineries and no petroleum pipelines coming in from out of state. So essentially all the fuel for the southern peninsula arrives at Port Everglades by ship and leaves it by truck — one of the highest truck-dependency ratios in the country, and the reason this is a tanker town before it is anything else.

It is also a rail town now. The Florida East Coast Railway’s intermodal container transfer facility at the port covers 42 to 43 acres and took the railway’s available capacity from 100,000 lifts a year to 450,000, with volumes up 26 per cent in its first year. That railway meets the national network at Jacksonville.

One filing note, because it decides what this page is about. Eight rows here are assigned to Fort Lauderdale while the port row that anchors them is assigned to Dania Beach, 0.1 miles away. They are one place doing one job under two city names.

So a buyer who learned to inspect trucks in a road-salt state will look in the wrong half of the chassis, and it is worth saying exactly why.

Florida does not salt a road anywhere. What a truck at Port Everglades gets instead is pure salt air and humidity, and that attacks differently: less undercarriage scaling than road salt produces, and more corrosion in electrical connectors and fasteners — more of it above the frame than below it.

So the honest advice is to photograph the connectors, the grounds and the fastener heads as carefully as the frame rails. On a truck off the 43 acres of the transfer facility, or anywhere else around Fort Lauderdale, those are where the years actually show.

Which is the same reason the weight rule bites harder here than in most of the state.

Florida’s divisible-load permit adds ten per cent over legal gross, off the interstate system only — and it explicitly does not reach a single-unit fuel tanker, which is held to 70,000 lb gross where a combination gets 80,000 lb. A fuel tanker is exactly the vehicle this port turns over, so the relief and the trade miss each other completely.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4), with § 316.535(6). 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; a lost one has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route.

On a tanker there is a second document trail worth mentioning early. The tank is usually a separate asset with its own inspection and test history, and that history does not transfer automatically with the truck.

The plate stays in your name and comes off the vehicle rather than going with it.

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

All of it is iron we buy. Fuel tankers off Port Everglades. Day cabs and road tractors off the intermodal end of the same yard. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a terminal crew in Dania Beach and Fort Lauderdale alike.

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 frame looks fine but the wiring is green. Is that fatal?No, and at Port Everglades it is the expected pattern rather than a surprise — salt air goes for connectors and fasteners before it scales an undercarriage, on a 70,000 lb single-unit tanker as much as anything else.
• It hauled fuel. Does that change anything?Tell us what it carried and whether the tank comes with it. The tank is usually a separate asset with its own test history.
• 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 fuel contract out of Port Everglades that ended and left one tanker standing, or a drayage tractor off the 43 acres of the transfer facility 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.