We buy trucks in Ocala

Four quarry registrations sit under Ocala — Lowell Mine & Mill with 32 people, Stavola NW Pit with 10, the 328 Pit with 7 and North Mine with 6 — and two of them set records at opposite ends of the same scale.

A loaded truck leaving the Lowell gate meets a rated crossing 0.09 miles later. That is about ninety-three yards, the closest restricted structure we have measured in 1,420 rows and nearer by a factor of two than the previous one. It is record 364002, carrying CR-25A, county-maintained, rated 26.4 metric tonnes — which admits roughly 15.4 tonnes of stone over an empty tandem’s tare. The truck crosses part loaded, before it has finished accelerating.

The 328 Pit, meanwhile, has no structure of any kind within ten miles. In 1,460 rows that had never once happened.

So the empty one gets the qualification rather than the headline. The nearest structure to the 328 Pit is 10.33 miles away and the next is 10.54, and seventy-one lie within twenty miles.

Move the circle four hundred metres and that pit stops being empty. Ten miles is a defensible first haul and that is why the figure is drawn there, but the number is a property of the radius as much as of the place, and reporting it any other way would be dishonest.

The crossing at Lowell Mine needs no such caveat. Ninety-three yards is ninety-three yards whatever circle you draw around it, and 10.33 miles is a long way to the nearest bridge whichever way you look at it.

Which is the point worth taking from both of them. Marion County posts four of the 24 bridges it maintains.

Two of those four are the binding crossings for three separate quarries. Stavola NW Pit reads the same structure Lowell does, from 4.19 miles; North Mine meets a different one 9.73 miles out, rated 24.9 tonnes and admitting about 13.9; and the 328 Pit meets nothing at all inside the radius.

So the objects that decide what leaves these pits number two. Not twenty-four, and not the several thousand a statewide figure counts. That is a far smaller and far more useful number, and it is the level at which somebody actually plans a route.

Those two crossings sit under a ceiling that travels with the vehicle rather than with the road.

A single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker may not exceed 70,000 lb gross — 31.75 tonnes, against the 36.3 a combination grosses. The divisible-load permit that adds ten per cent off the interstate system does not reach those vehicles at all.

Fla. Stat. § 316.535(6), with § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice.

Both of those stop mattering the day the truck changes hands. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.

Everything past that is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. The plate stays in your name and comes off the truck rather than going with it.

Where an insurer has paid a total loss, an electronic lien recorded on the title is the thing that actually holds it up.

Fla. Stat. § 320.0609(1)(a) and § 319.30. Information, not legal advice.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Lowell Mine and North Mine end of the trade, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Day cabs and road tractors. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, tankers, service bodies, rollbacks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew in Marion County.

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 has crossed a rated bridge part loaded for years. Does that show up?Not as damage. It shows up as more trips for the same tonnage over the crossing 0.09 miles from the Lowell Mine gate, which is hours rather than miles, and hours are what we would rather hear about.
• 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 pit that finished and left one truck standing in Marion County with nothing booked for it, 4.19 miles from the crossing it used every working day.

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.