We buy trucks in Mims

The row we hold at Mims is a port yard on the Space Coast, near Port Canaveral, which is a cruise and cargo port. That is a description of the port district, and it is not a measurement of the yard.

Traffic at the yard itself was not determined. We are not going to convert a characterisation of a district into a claim about a rail yard, because those are two different facts and only one of them is ours to make.

So this page is short on local colour on purpose. What it is not short on is the part that decides whether you can sell a truck from out here without moving it first.

So it is worth answering that one before anything else. Mims is not a metro, and a page that confidently promised somebody would drive out to it would be making a claim about our week rather than a statement about your truck.

The honest answer is that the purchase does not need a visit. We can buy the truck where it stands and arrange the tow, and nobody has to be standing in the yard for that to happen. Out on the Space Coast that is the ordinary path rather than the fallback, and the same is true at the Port Canaveral end of the county.

The other ways are still open and they are not theatre. We come out and drive it away, we come out and tow it, and if you are going past us anyway you can bring it. Which one it turns out to be depends on the truck and the week, not on where you are.

That is also why the paperwork is worth starting before you need it, because one Florida clock runs whether or not anybody is attending to it.

A towing and storage operator in possession of a vehicle has a lien on it for recovery, towing and storage. Notice goes by certified mail to the registered owner, the insurer and any lienholder inside five business days of storage, excluding weekends and federal holidays. The vehicle can then go to public sale 35 days after storage if it is more than three years old, and 57 days if it is newer — a split by model year we have not met in another state. Notice of the sale itself goes out at least 30 days ahead.

The statute draws no distinction by vehicle weight, so a class-eight dump truck runs on exactly the same clock as a passenger car. If a truck of yours is sitting somewhere and accruing storage, that is the clock to know about.

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

Both of those are about a truck that has stopped. The weight rule is about one still working, and it comes down to two numbers.

Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including enforcement tolerances, 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 at all.

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

All of it is iron we buy, and on the Space Coast that runs from site work to route work. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers — the ones Florida holds to 70,000 lb rather than 80,000 lb. Flatbeds and day cabs. Box trucks and straight trucks, tankers, service bodies, rollbacks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

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

• Do you actually come out this far?Sometimes we do, and sometimes we do not need to — we can buy the truck where it stands and arrange the tow. Either way the distance is not your problem to solve, here or anywhere else on the Space Coast, Port Canaveral included.
• 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.
• 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, and they are no different on the Space Coast than anywhere else. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck that is just sitting a few miles from Port Canaveral, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

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.