We buy trucks in Mayo

The quarry filed here is Blue Rok Incorporated, and its coordinate sits 0.18 miles from the Census centroid of the town. That is about as close as a row gets. Most pits in this file sit some way from the city on their paperwork — twenty-four miles, fifty-one miles, and in one case a thousand — and this one is effectively in the middle of the place it names.

MSHA records four employees on it. Four is a small registration even by this file’s standards, and it tells you the shape of the operation: a handful of people, a short haul, and in all likelihood one truck doing most of the work.

Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 10 structures, none posted for load and none coded below legal loads. Ten is among the thinnest circles measured anywhere in the state — the emptiest had no structure at all.

So this is the ordinary Florida case rather than the exception. Across the 62 Florida rows researched, 37 of them — 59.7% — carry no commercial floor at all: no restricted crossing within 10 miles to plan a load around, and Lafayette County’s own circle is one of them.

That is a different world from the states measured beside it. Statewide 4.4% of Florida structures are coded below legal loads. Where Indiana had a restriction to attribute on almost every node, three Florida nodes in five have none to attribute to anybody.

So what limits a load out here is the schedule rather than the crossing, and the schedule is the next thing.

Which comes down to a single subsection. Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and 20,000 lb on a single axle.

Then a single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker is capped at 70,000 lb gross including the weight of the vehicle — ten thousand pounds below the same truck configured as a combination. The 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.

So the weight of the assessment falls back on the machine itself. A four-person pit on a short haul makes many trips and few miles, with a lot of low-gear work on unpaved surfaces and long idle spells between loads.

Hours climb and the odometer does not. A tipper held to 70,000 lb has to make more trips for the same tonnage than an 80,000 lb combination would, and on an operation this size those trips were probably all made by the same truck.

Florida salts no roads anywhere, so corrosion around Lafayette County is a humidity story rather than a road-salt one. It shows at connectors and fastener heads as readily as on the frame rails, and none of it stops us buying.

Both of those are about condition. The paperwork is the part that decides how fast a sale moves. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.

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 stays in your name rather than going with the truck, which surprises people who have sold in a plate-with-vehicle state. It transfers to a replacement vehicle of the same class or goes back to the county tax collector.

Fla. Stat. § 320.0609(1)(a). Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy across Lafayette County. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the pit, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Log trucks and timber rigs off the Suwannee River woods, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, box trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a small crew — the same over towards Branford and Live Oak.

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.
• We are a four-man outfit with one truck. Is that too small for you?No. A four-person registration is the ordinary shape around Lafayette County, and a single truck that did all the trips is exactly the history we read — hours before mileage, every time. It is the same 70,000 lb tipper as anybody else’s, and the same 80,000 lb if it runs as a combination.
• 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 four-person operation down to three, with one tipper standing in a Lafayette County yard 0.18 miles from the middle of town and 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.