We buy trucks in Destin

Our Okaloosa County file holds eight rows, and exactly one of them is filed under Destin: a military installation on Moreno Point. Its acreage, its strength and its mission were not established.

That is the whole of what we hold on it. A page that spun three paragraphs out of that would be padding, and the location itself tells us something more useful than a description would have.

So the local fact here is the air. Gulf salt works from underneath, and on a truck that has lived on the Okaloosa County coast the underside is both the first thing to look at and usually the most honest.

Frame rails and crossmembers. Brake and air lines. Electrical grounds. Body mounts. Paint on this coast tells you very little about what is going on below the cab, and a seller who has kept the underside washed has a real advantage they can point at.

Worth saying what it is not: Florida salts no roads, so none of this is road salt. It is salt air and humidity, which get at different places and are easy to look for in the wrong one — and on a truck off Moreno Point it has had the Gulf on one side of it for its whole life.

None of that stops us buying. It changes where we start, and it is the reason the photographs we ask for include the engine from both sides rather than a picture of the front.

That underside is also what an assessor looks at, and Florida measures the result in a way worth understanding before you assume anything about your title.

A vehicle is salvage here where the cost of repair equals or exceeds 80 per cent of the cost to replace it with a vehicle of like kind and quality. The percentage travels between states and the base does not: New York measures 75 per cent of retail value at the time of loss, Indiana 70 per cent of fair market value before the damage, Oregon retail market value before the damage. Comparing percentages alone compares numbers that do not share a denominator.

The seller-facing part is much shorter. 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. Where an insurer has been involved, an electronic lien recorded on the title is the thing that actually holds it up.

Fla. Stat. § 319.30(3)(a) and § 319.30. Information, not legal advice.

Both of those are about a truck that has already been damaged. The weight rule is about one still working, and it splits by road.

A divisible-load permit lets FDOT allow ten per cent over legal gross weight off the interstate system only, so it is worth nothing on I-10 and worth ten per cent on everything else. It does not reach single-unit dump trucks, mixers, waste vehicles or fuel tankers, which Florida caps at 70,000 lb gross in their own right.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4), with § 316.535(6). Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy. Box trucks and straight trucks off route and service work, most of it inside Okaloosa County and along the panhandle. Dump trucks and flatbeds off construction — the dumps among them held to 70,000 lb rather than 80,000 lb. Day cabs and road tractors, tankers, service bodies, rollbacks, and the work trucks and 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.
• There is surface corrosion all along the frame. Is that a no?No. On the Okaloosa County coast we expect it and we look for it, on a truck off Moreno Point or anywhere else along here. What decides the answer is whether the truck is complete.
• 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.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A season that finished and left one truck more than the next one needs at an Okaloosa County yard, out towards Moreno Point.

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.