We buy trucks in Fort Lauderdale

Seventeen of the twenty rows in our Broward County file are one place: Port Everglades and the estate around it — the port itself, eight liquid-bulk terminals, three ro-ro berths, two rail yards and two intermodal ramps. This page is not about those. It is about the military row, whose name says Dania Beach and resolves to Fort Lauderdale, and those are two cities sharing a boundary rather than one place with two names.

The acreage, the strength and the mission were not established. So there is no version of this page that describes a facility, and we are not going to invent one to fill the space.

What is left is honest, and it is not nothing: the coast, the law, and the paperwork a truck sold in Broward County actually meets.

So start with what every truck here has in common, which is the air. Broward County is a coastal county and salt gets underneath long before it shows anywhere you would notice.

On an inspection that means the underside first: frame rails and crossmembers, brake and air lines, electrical grounds, body mounts. Paint tells you very little on this coast and the underside tells you most of it.

It is not road salt doing it, either — Florida does not salt a road anywhere in the state, so what you have is salt air and humidity, which attack a truck in a different pattern and in different places. It is the same air over Dania Beach and the port, and a buyer used to a salt state will look in the wrong half of the chassis.

None of that stops us buying, and it is not a complaint about your truck. It is where we start, and a seller who knows that can have the answer ready before we ask.

That is also the shape of the paperwork here, and it surprises anyone who has last sold a vehicle in a plate-goes-with-the-vehicle state.

Florida requires the registration, the licence plate and the certificate of registration to be issued to and remain in the name of the owner, and it prohibits transferring a plate and registration to another person. So the plate does not go with the truck. You take it off, and you either move it to a replacement vehicle of the same classification for a transfer fee or surrender it to the county tax collector.

The rest is one sentence. 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.

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

Both of those are about a truck standing still. The weight rule is about one that is moving, and Florida splits it by which road it is on.

FDOT may permit ten per cent over legal gross weight, off the interstate system only. On I-95 and I-595 that permit is worth nothing; on the state and county network it is worth ten per cent. It does not reach single-unit dump trucks, mixers, waste vehicles or fuel tankers either, 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 work, most of it inside Broward County rather than on a long haul, and some of it out of Dania Beach at the port end. Day cabs and road tractors. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off construction. Flatbeds, tankers, service bodies, rollbacks, car haulers, 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.
• Do I hand over the plate with the truck?No — in Florida the plate stays with you. Take it off and either transfer it to another vehicle of the same class or surrender it to the Broward County tax collector. A seller in Dania Beach or anywhere else in the state does the same thing.
• 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 contract that ended and left one truck more than the work needs in a Broward County yard, or on the Dania Beach side of the line.

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.