Lake County
Four fields on one row, and three different counties
The Center Hill Mine employs nine people, and its record disagrees with itself in a way nothing in the file can settle. The county field says Sumter. The coordinate returns Hernando. The city field says Leesburg, which is in Lake County, 26.88 miles away. And the row’s own name, Center Hill, is a town in Sumter County.
Four fields, three counties, and no majority. The last cross-check failure we found had a third field to break the tie — a coordinate and a city agreeing against a county field. Here the city field points at a third county instead of settling anything.
So we publish what the coordinate says, which is Hernando, and name all four readings rather than choosing one silently. Two such failures in two batches, both in the middle of the peninsula where the county lines run close together. Two is not a rate and we are not claiming it is a Florida property.
So the crossing is the part of this record that is not in doubt
So it is worth moving to something the file agrees with itself about, and the road measurement is that thing.
Within ten miles of the coordinate the National Bridge Inventory records 41 structures, two posted for load and one coded below legal loads, county-maintained, 7.85 miles from the gate. That count is drawn around a point, not around an administrative boundary, so it survives the county argument entirely.
Statewide only 4.4% of Florida structures are coded below legal loads, and one in 41 is close to that. The interesting part is not how many. It is what that one is rated at.
Which is four hundred pounds short of not mattering at all
Which is the same crossing the pit over at Bushnell reads from 9.10 miles — record 184006, carrying CR-48, county-maintained — and its operating rating is 36.1 metric tonnes.
A legal 80,000 lb combination grosses 36.3. So that bridge sits two tenths of a tonne, about four hundred pounds, below the point at which a legal load simply crosses whole. It publishes a payload of 25.1 tonnes against the roughly 25.3 a combination carries.
And a single-unit dump truck, capped at 70,000 lb gross, crosses it whole with more than four tonnes to spare. One crossing, two answers, decided by how the truck is built rather than by the bridge.
Florida weight law
And the sections that produce that inversion
Those two answers come from two different subsections, and it is worth having them exactly.
Florida sets a gross limit of 80,000 lb including all enforcement tolerances. A separate subsection 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 — 31.75 tonnes. The divisible-load permit adds ten per cent off the interstate system only and does not reach those vehicles.
Fla. Stat. § 316.535(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 — and neither cares which of three counties a file thinks the yard is in.
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, whichever county the paperwork settles on. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Center Hill Mine, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb — and crossing CR-48 whole for exactly that reason. 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 Leesburg
- 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.
- My paperwork says one county and the yard is in another. Does that stop a sale?No. Our own row here names three counties across four fields — Sumter, Hernando and Lake County — while the row itself is called Center Hill. It has never affected anything. We work from where the truck actually is.
- 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 truck standing 26.88 miles from the Lake County city on its paperwork, with nothing booked for it.
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.