We buy trucks in Panama City

The panhandle ports sit where three weight regimes meet, and all three treat forest products differently. Florida grants a divisible-load permit of ten per cent over gross, off the interstate system only. Georgia grants forest and agricultural loads a variance of ten per cent up to 88,000 lb, also off the interstate. Alabama grants a 102-inch width allowance and no gross variance at all.

So a log truck crossing either line changes regimes — and the two neighbours differ from each other as much as they differ from Florida. Alabama gives width. Georgia gives weight. Florida gives a permit and names no commodity.

A truck working out of here can be under two rulebooks in a single day, and the odometer has no idea which one it was on.

So what moves through these ports is timber. The Florida panhandle and south Alabama together form one of the largest pine basins in the country, and what comes out of it leaves as an 88,000 lb load in Georgia or a 102-inch one in Alabama depending which way it goes.

Hurricane Michael made landfall here as a Category 5 in October 2018 and flattened a large part of that basin. That is not background colour on a page about trucks — it changed what the equipment did for years afterwards, and it means storm-damage and storm-salvage history is a fair question to ask about a vehicle from this area.

We are asking it rather than assuming an answer. Mill operating status was not verified and no operator is named, so this describes a basin and a storm, not a customer.

Which is worth being explicit about, because “storm history” can sound like a way of talking a truck down, and after Hurricane Michael it is not.

Salvage work after Michael was hard, useful running: debris, downed timber, site access on roads that were not roads for a while. A truck that did it has hours and a particular kind of wear, and telling us so is more use than leaving us to guess from the odometer.

The second of our two rows here is a filing note rather than a place: its coordinate falls inside Cedar Grove, which has a page of its own, while the row is attached to Panama City. We say so instead of moving the pin.

Both of those cross-border rules are about what a trailer may carry. One Florida limb is about how the truck is built, and it applies whichever side you started on.

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, against 80,000 lb for a combination. The ten per cent permit does not reach those vehicles at all, so a straight truck gets nothing from it in any county.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4) and § 316.535(6); Georgia and Alabama rules are their own. Information, not legal advice.

Those rules 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.

If an insurer settled anything after Hurricane Michael, the thing that actually holds a sale up is an electronic lien recorded on the title, which has to be released before the rest moves.

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

All of it is iron we buy. Log trucks and timber rigs off the pine basin, on 88,000 lb Georgia loads and Florida ones alike. Flatbeds and day cabs off the port work. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, 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 woods crew.

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 did storm-salvage work after Hurricane Michael. Does that count against it?No, and we would rather know. It is hard running and it puts on hours, so telling us is more use than letting us guess from the odometer.
• It is titled in Alabama and parked here. Does that complicate it?No. Trucks in this basin cross that line constantly — Alabama gives 102 inches of width and Georgia gives 88,000 lb of weight — and we handle the paperwork either way round.
• 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.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A woods contract that ended and left one log truck spare somewhere out past Cedar Grove, on a basin that has not been the same since Hurricane Michael came through in October 2018.

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.