Alachua County
Four quarries, 144 people, and the emptiest ten miles we have measured
Four registrations sit under Newberry: the Newberry Cement Plant with 110 people, 1415 Newberry with 18, Newberry Limestone with 9 and Newberry Mine-Limestone Materials with 7. All four are within a few miles of the town, and the closest resolves to within three quarters of a mile of it.
Within ten miles of the cement plant the National Bridge Inventory records four structures. Four in total, not four restricted — and none of them is posted for load or coded below legal loads. That is the thinnest network we have measured in 1,420 rows.
It is not a hole in the file. Widen the same circle to twenty miles and there are 86 structures; widen it to thirty and there are 218. The hole is in the network.
So the honest qualifier belongs in the same breath
So here is the caveat, next to the fact rather than in a footnote. A clean run of four structures says a great deal less than a clean run of two hundred.
Both are true statements and they carry very different weight, which is why the count belongs beside the rate every time. Alachua County posts three of the 34 bridges it maintains, and that is a third measurement again, taken over a different set of objects entirely.
None of the three tells you a route is clear. What they tell you together is that around the Newberry Cement Plant there is very little bridge to be stopped by, and that the National Bridge Inventory is counting structures rather than judging routes.
Florida weight law
Which leaves the truck itself as the limit
Which leaves the ceiling written into the truck, since almost nothing on this network is going to impose a lower one.
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.
Limestone and cement out of this belt run long two-lane hauls to Gainesville, Ocala and the coast, and none of that is interstate mileage either.
Fla. Stat. § 316.535 and § 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.
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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the limestone, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Mixers and bulk tankers off the cement plant. Day cabs and road tractors for the two-lane run, flatbeds, box trucks, rollbacks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew in Alachua County.
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 Newberry
- 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 has run two-lane roads its whole life. Does that matter?It matters to how it wore rather than to whether we buy it. Steady road time out of the Newberry Cement Plant treats a driveline differently from stop-start metro work anywhere else in Alachua County, and it is worth telling us.
- 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 quarry contract that ended and left one truck standing in Alachua County with nothing booked for it, up the road from the Newberry Cement Plant.
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.