We buy trucks in Key West

US 1 is the only land route out of Key West. It runs about 113 miles to the mainland across more than forty bridges, with salt spray on both sides of it the whole way, and at no point is there an alternative.

Our file holds five rows under Key West itself — Truman Annex, Trumbo Point Annex, Dredgers Key at Sigsbee, Fleming Key Magazine and a special forces site. They are five of the eight in Monroe County; the other three are the air station and a training site out at Big Coppitt Key, and the port at Stock Island. Acreage, strength and mission were not established for any of them, so we are not going to describe what we did not establish.

One of them does change what a road means. Fleming Key Magazine is an ordnance magazine, and a placarded explosives load carries routing restrictions. We did not research the DOT and DoD explosives rules and we are not asserting them. The geography is not in dispute: here there is nothing to route around.

So the odometer is a poor guide on a truck from down here, and it is worth being exact about why.

The mileage is 113 miles of one road repeated. The hours are loading, unloading and waiting. Put a Monroe County truck and a Miami one side by side with the same reading and you have two vehicles with almost nothing in common — one has done stop-start metro work in traffic, the other a long fixed run and then a long stand.

And the salt is on it the entire way, both sides, every trip. On this island the underside comes first on any inspection, and it comes first sooner than it would anywhere else in the state.

Which is why we are going to answer the collection question up front instead of leaving you to work it out.

The purchase does not need a visit. We can buy the truck where it stands and arrange the tow, and across 113 miles of single road that is frequently the sensible way round rather than a fallback. Monroe County holds about 82,000 people and no used-truck market to speak of, so wherever a truck sold here ends up, it leaves up that road.

The other ways are real and stay open. We come out and drive it away, we come out and tow it, and if you are heading up the road anyway you can bring it. What we will not do is quietly imply that somebody driving all the way down is the only way this happens.

That road is also where the one thing we could not find would have counted most. Where Florida publishes its posted-bridge list was not located, and on forty-odd crossings with no way round any of them, a page that pretended to know would be worse than one that admits it does not.

What we can state is the weight rule. Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and caps a single-unit dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker at 70,000 lb. The divisible-load permit adds ten per cent over legal gross off the interstate system only — and there is no interstate down here at all, so on paper the whole of it is available.

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

Those rules 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.

One Florida clock is worth knowing about down here in particular, because getting a vehicle recovered is expensive on a single road. A towing and storage operator in possession of a vehicle has a lien on it, and the vehicle can go to public sale 35 days after storage if it is more than three years old and 57 days if it is newer.

The statute draws no distinction by vehicle weight, so a class-eight truck runs on the same clock as a car.

Fla. Stat. § 713.78. Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy, and the mix on an island is its own thing. Box trucks and straight trucks off delivery routes. Service bodies and utility trucks. Flatbeds, dump trucks, day cabs, rollbacks, tankers, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew in Monroe County — Truman Annex and the rest of the naval estate included.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• Do you seriously come down here?Sometimes, and often we do not need to: we can buy the truck where it stands and arrange the tow. The 113 miles up to Monroe County’s far end are ours to deal with either way.
• 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 has low miles for its age. Does that count against it?No. One road repeated is the normal shape of an island truck, and we read the hours and the salt rather than the odometer.
• 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.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck that is just sitting somewhere near Trumbo Point Annex, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel in Monroe County.

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.