We buy trucks in Navarre

The row filed under Navarre is a Naval Outlying Landing Field named Holley. Holley is also a community of its own along the Santa Rosa Sound, it has a page in this file, and the row filed there names a different field again — Choctaw.

So the two names are crossed. The field called Holley resolves to Navarre; the town called Holley carries the field called Choctaw. Neither resolution is wrong, and both read as though one of them must be.

Acreage, strength and current status were not established for this field. It gets its name, its county, and nothing invented on top of them.

So the useful frame is the complex rather than the strip. The Navy’s planning document lists eight outlying fields in the Whiting Field complex — Brewton, Evergreen, Wolf, Holley, Choctaw, Barin, Summerdale and Silverhill — and six of the eight are in Alabama rather than Florida.

That is why two of them land in Santa Rosa County within a few miles of one another. It is a training complex spread across a state line, not a cluster of separate bases, and what it puts on the road is equipment moves between strips rather than line-haul.

Which is a flatbed and lowboy business more than a sleeper business, and it shows in what comes up for sale around here.

Which is where a Santa Rosa County truck on the Sound differs from an inland one. The water is on one side and the Gulf is just past it, so salt air reaches a vehicle standing still as readily as one that is working.

It is not road salt. Florida salts no roads anywhere, so the damage lands in different places than a northern buyer expects: less scaling along the frame rails, more corrosion at connectors, grounds, body mounts and fastener heads.

So when you send photographs, include the underside and the engine from both sides rather than the front three-quarter view. On a truck that has spent years within sight of the Santa Rosa Sound, that is the part that decides where we start — and a wash-down history, underneath as well as over, is worth telling us about.

Those are about the truck. The weight rule is about the load, and it is short.

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 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 numbers stop mattering the day the truck changes hands, and the paperwork is what is left. 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. On anything that came off a landing field, settle first whether it was ever road-registered at all — for those it is a title question before it is a condition question.

The plate stays in the owner’s name rather than going with the truck. It moves to a replacement vehicle of the same class, or it 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 Santa Rosa County. Log trucks and timber rigs off the panhandle woods, flatbeds and lowboys off equipment moves around the outlying strips, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, box trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a crew — the same over towards Holley and Gulf Breeze.

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.
• There is corrosion all along the frame. Is that a no?No. On the Santa Rosa Sound we expect it and we look for it — it is salt air rather than road salt, so it turns up at connectors and fastener heads as much as on the rails. It changes where we start, not whether we buy — underneath, it is still the same 70,000 lb tipper or 80,000 lb combination as anywhere else.
• 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. An equipment-moving contract around the outlying strips that ended and left one lowboy standing beside the Santa Rosa Sound, in Santa Rosa County, 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.