Collier County
A genuine clean run, and the word is worth being careful with
The Sunniland Mine employs nine people about a mile from the middle of Immokalee. Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records 23 structures, and not one is posted for load or coded below legal loads.
Both fields empty, which is the thing worth saying precisely. Elsewhere in this lane we have found nodes with no rating and a sign anyway, and those are not the same case — a driver meets a sign. Here there is neither.
Collier County posts two of the 120 bridges it maintains, and one of those two is the crossing that decides the pit over at Naples, 5.89 miles from its gate. Not this one.
So the limit here is the truck, and it is not recoverable
So with nothing on the road imposing a cap, the binding number in Collier County is the one written into the vehicle.
A single-unit dump truck is held to 70,000 lb gross where a combination gets 80,000 lb, and the difference is decided by configuration rather than by anything the driver can do about it on the day. Ten thousand pounds of carrying capacity, fixed.
What that means in practice at the Sunniland Mine is more trips for the same tonnage — which is hours rather than miles, and the reason we would rather hear the hour meter than the odometer when you call.
Which the permit cannot give back
Which is the part people are most often surprised by, because a permit sounds like the obvious answer and here it is not.
Florida’s divisible-load permit adds ten per cent over legal gross and is void on the interstate system — and it explicitly does not reach a single-unit dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker. Around Immokalee almost nothing is interstate mileage, so the road condition costs you nothing and the body condition costs you everything.
Statewide only 4.4% of structures are coded below legal loads, so around the Sunniland Mine the vehicle is very nearly the only constraint there is.
Florida weight law
The two numbers, and where they come from
Those figures are statutory rather than local, and they are worth having exactly.
Florida sets a single axle at 20,000 lb and a gross at 80,000 lb including all enforcement tolerances. Subsection 6 caps a single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker at 70,000 lb. The ten per cent permit sits in a different section and excludes exactly those vehicles.
Fla. Stat. § 316.535(1), (4), (5) and (6), with § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice.
Florida paperwork
We need a title — unless the truck never had one
Those numbers stop mattering the day the truck changes hands, and the paperwork is what is left.
A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither is unusual and neither stops a sale.
The plate is the Florida detail people miss: it stays in the owner’s name and comes off the truck, to be moved to another vehicle of the same class or surrendered to the county tax collector.
Fla. Stat. § 320.0609(1)(a). Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
All of it is iron we buy across Collier County. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Sunniland Mine, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, box trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a nine-person crew.
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 Immokalee
- 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.
- Nothing round here is posted. Does that make the truck an easier sell?It makes the route simpler, not the truck different. 23 structures and nothing rated around the Sunniland Mine means the 70,000 lb cap did the limiting rather than any bridge, and that shows in hours.
- 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 pit contract that ended and left one dump truck standing in Collier County with nothing booked for it, a mile from the Sunniland Mine gate.
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.