We buy trucks in Homestead Base

This is a census place named after the installation rather than the other way round, and unlike most of them it carries a page of its own. The single row filed here is the air reserve base, and its coordinate returns Miami-Dade County.

Acreage, strength and mission were not established. So this page does not describe the facility, and it is not going to fill the space with adjectives about one.

What can be said about the roads around it is county-level rather than local: Miami-Dade posts 16 of the 226 bridges it maintains, 7.1%, so the county tier is not idle — and statewide only 4.4% of Florida structures are coded below legal loads at all.

So the thing worth answering plainly is the one a seller in Miami-Dade County actually worries about, which is whether getting to the truck will be a problem.

It is not yours to solve. We come out and drive it away, we come out and tow it, or we buy it where it stands and arrange the tow — and that last one needs nobody standing beside the vehicle, which is often the simplest answer where a gate is involved.

Down here the next ordinary road town is Florida City, and past that US 1 runs 113 miles to Key West with nothing to route around. Distance has never been the seller’s problem on our side of a deal.

Which is the shape of a base support fleet, and it is worth describing accurately when you call.

Vehicles working a closed site in Miami-Dade County run short distances many times over, with a great deal of low-speed manoeuvring and standing time. Hours accumulate and the odometer does not, so a reading that looks low for the age is the normal thing rather than a suspicious one.

Add the coastal air to that. Salt and humidity put the underside first: frame rails and crossmembers, brake and air lines, electrical grounds, body mounts. Florida salts no roads, so it is salt air doing it rather than road salt — and in Miami-Dade County it reaches the connectors as readily as the frame, on 7.1% posted bridges or none.

Both of those are about the truck. The weight rule is about the load.

Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and 20,000 lb on a single axle, and caps a single-unit dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker at 70,000 lb. A divisible-load permit adds ten per cent off the interstate system only and does not reach those single-unit vehicles.

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

Those numbers 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 anything that has spent its life inside a fence, settle first whether it was ever road-registered. For those it is a title question before it is a condition question, and finding out early saves a wasted day.

The plate, where there is one, 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 across Miami-Dade County. Flatbeds and lowboys off equipment moves. Service bodies and utility trucks off support work. Day cabs and road tractors, box trucks and straight trucks, dump trucks held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, tankers, rollbacks and the 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.
• It only ever ran inside the gate. Is that a problem?No. Closed-site work in Miami-Dade County puts on hours rather than miles, and hours are what we would rather hear about — 7.1% of the county’s bridges are posted and none of that ever applied to it.
• 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 support contract that ended and left one service truck standing in Miami-Dade County with nothing booked for it, plated at 80,000 lb and going nowhere.

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.