We buy trucks in Miramar

The row filed under Miramar is a National Guard training site at Snake Creek, and its coordinate reverse-geocodes to Broward County. That is the whole of what the record establishes about the site, and the rest of it is not going to be invented here.

What the research did not find matters more than usual on this one. Florida’s posted-bridge list was not located for this row, and neither were the terms of the indivisible-load permit. So there is no restricted-crossing circle to quote around Snake Creek the way there is around a quarry.

That is an absence in the record rather than an absence on the road, and the two are different facts. Nobody is going to call a route clear on the strength of a list that was never found.

So the ground worth standing on here is the machine rather than the installation. Equipment that has worked out of a National Guard site tends to accumulate hours rather than miles — short moves, long stands, and maintenance done on a schedule rather than when something breaks.

That last part is worth handing over. A scheduled-maintenance record is among the most useful things a seller can produce, and it is the kind of history this sort of equipment often carries.

A single-unit dump truck is capped at 70,000 lb in Florida where a combination gets 80,000 lb, so a Broward County tipper on short municipal runs makes more trips for the same tonnage. Hours before mileage, again.

Which leads straight to the paperwork, and on anything with a government history it leads there before anything else. A good deal of installation equipment was never road-registered in the ordinary way, so on a Snake Creek machine the question is whether a title exists at all before it is a question of condition.

That is an order of operations rather than a problem. Broward County trucks with ordinary commercial histories skip it entirely and go straight to condition.

And Florida’s plate rule catches people either way, which is the next thing.

So take the title first. We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one; a lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route.

Then the plate. In Florida the registration, the plate and the certificate stay in the owner’s name, and a plate cannot be transferred to another person — so it comes off the truck and either moves to a replacement vehicle of the same class or goes back to the county tax collector. Sellers who have dealt in a plate-with-vehicle state expect the opposite.

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

That is the paperwork. The load rule is separate and it has one trap in it.

Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and 20,000 lb on a single axle, 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, and it is void on the interstate system 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 across Broward County. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds and lowboys off equipment moves, box trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a crew — the same through Pembroke Pines and Hollywood.

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.
• It came off a government site. Does that change anything?Only the order. On a Snake Creek or National Guard machine we establish whether it was ever road-registered before we talk condition — after that it is the same 70,000 lb or 80,000 lb truck as anybody else’s in Broward County.
• 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 contract around Snake Creek that ended and left one flatbed standing in a Broward County yard 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.