Lee County
One bridge decides what leaves three quarries
Alico Road Quarry employs 25 people. Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records 97 structures, and exactly one of them is coded below legal loads.
That one is record 124127, carrying Constitution Circle, county-maintained, 5.11 miles out. It is also the crossing Fort Myers Quarry reads from 7.47 miles and Fort Myers Mine reads from 7.10. Three of the four registrations in our Lee County file, one restricted bridge between them — and it is the same bridge, not three of them.
Lee County posts three of the 125 bridges it maintains. The decisive object here is a single structure, and naming it is more use than a county percentage that averages it away.
So the number that matters is what it admits
So the useful question is not whether it is restricted but how much it takes. The Constitution Circle crossing is rated at 20.1 metric tonnes, and the rating is the gross weight of the vehicle rather than the load it carries.
Take off the tare of an empty tandem dump — about 11 tonnes — and roughly nine tonnes of stone goes over. Read in bands: under 11 tonnes nothing commercial crosses at all, even empty; between 11 and 36.3 the crossing takes a truck only part loaded; at or above 36.3 a legal load crosses whole. This one is in the middle band, so the truck goes over part loaded or it goes round.
None of that is visible from the cab until you are at it, which is the reason it is on this page. Lee County posts three of the 125 bridges it maintains, so the odds of meeting another are low — but the odds are not the point when the one you meet is 5.11 miles from the gate.
Florida weight law
That band closes earlier than the arithmetic suggests
That band closes earlier here than the arithmetic implies, because Florida caps the truck as well as the crossing.
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 — 31.75 tonnes, against the 36.3 a combination grosses. So for this trade the band that matters closes about 4.5 tonnes below the figure a combination would use, and the divisible-load permit that adds ten per cent off the interstate does not reach those vehicles either.
Fla. Stat. § 316.535(6), with § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice.
Florida paperwork
The title question, and the one thing that really holds it up
Both of those ceilings stop mattering the day the truck changes hands. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.
Everything past that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route.
Where an insurer has paid a total loss, the thing that actually holds the process up is an electronic lien recorded on the title. That has to be released before anything else moves, and it is worth finding out early rather than late.
Fla. Stat. § 319.30. Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Alico Road end of the trade. Day cabs and road tractors. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, tankers, service bodies, rollbacks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew in Lee 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 Fort Myers
- 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 is a tandem dump that has run part loaded for years. Does that show?It shows in hours and in the loading cycle rather than the odometer, and on a truck working out of Alico Road Quarry that is what we would rather hear about. Lee County work is short-radius by nature.
- 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 job that finished and left one dump truck more than the next one needs on a Lee County yard, 5.11 miles from the crossing that decided 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.