We buy trucks in Pinellas Park

The row filed here is an Air Force reserve centre, and its coordinate reverse-geocodes to Pinellas County. That is what the record establishes, and acreage, strength and current activity were not among it.

What separates a reserve centre from the airfields and ranges elsewhere in this file is that it has no land around it. It sits inside a built-up county rather than holding a reservation, so it generates traffic on ordinary city streets instead of on its own network of gates and strips.

That makes the useful ground here the county rather than the installation, which is a different answer from the one most military rows in this file produce.

So the trucks that come up for sale around Pinellas County are mostly the light end. Box trucks and straight trucks on delivery rounds, service bodies for the trades, and day cabs running short drayage rather than sleepers running lanes.

That is a stop-start life. Brakes, clutch, cooling and the driveline take the wear, while the frame and suspension often look better than the age would suggest, because the loads were light and the surfaces were paved.

Dump trucks are in the mix too, on demolition and construction rather than pit haulage, but they are not what this county mostly turns over. Pinellas County work is bounded work — the Gulf on one side and Tampa Bay on the other — so the runs are short by geography rather than by choice.

Which is the practical consequence for a seller. On a Pinellas County delivery truck the odometer understates the work by a wide margin, because a great deal of the engine’s life was spent stationary with the motor running.

So tell us the hours if the vehicle records them, and the service intervals if it does not. A box truck with 90,000 miles and a decade of city rounds is a different machine from one with 90,000 highway miles, and we would rather know which we are looking at.

Salt air is the other half of it, since the Gulf is on one side and Tampa Bay the other. Florida salts no roads anywhere, so corrosion here shows at connectors, grounds and fastener heads rather than as scaling along the rails.

So the load rule is worth stating plainly even where most of the traffic is light. Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and 20,000 lb on a single axle.

A single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker may not exceed 70,000 lb gross including the weight of the vehicle. 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.

Those are the load. The paperwork is what decides how fast a sale closes. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one, and a lost one has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route.

The plate stays in the owner’s name and comes off the truck — onto a replacement vehicle of the same class, or back to the county tax collector.

And where an insurer has been involved, Florida brands salvage at 80% of the cost to replace the vehicle with one of like kind and quality. Replacement cost is a different base from the retail and market-value ones other states use, so a percentage carried in from elsewhere does not transfer.

Fla. Stat. § 319.30(3)(a) and § 320.0609(1)(a). Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy across Pinellas County. Box trucks and straight trucks off delivery rounds, day cabs on short drayage across Tampa Bay, dump trucks held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, flatbeds, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a crew — the same through Largo and Seminole.

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 is a city delivery truck with low miles. Is it worth anything to you?Yes, and low miles on a Pinellas County round usually hide high hours rather than light use. Tell us the hours or the service intervals — on a truck that has crossed Tampa Bay twice a day for years we read those against the odometer rather than instead of it, whether it is a 70,000 lb single unit or an 80,000 lb combination.
• 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 delivery contract that ended and left one box truck standing in a Pinellas County yard on the Tampa Bay side 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.