We buy trucks in Port St. Joe

The rail row filed here carries the same name as the town it is filed under. That sounds unremarkable until you count: of the seventy rail rows in this file for the state, only about 20% do that. The other 80% name somewhere else, and several pages in this lane exist mostly to explain which.

So this one needs no untangling, which frees the page to be about the trade instead. The panhandle and south Alabama together form one of the largest pine timber basins in the country, and the ports along this coast exist to move what it produces.

Mill operating status was not verified and no operator is named on the row, so nothing here claims what is running today. The basin is the fact; the customer is not.

So the useful thing about sitting in this corner of the state is what is on the other side of it. The panhandle ports sit where three weight regimes meet, and all three treat forest products differently from one another.

Florida gives a divisible-load permit of ten per cent, off the interstate only. Georgia gives forest and agricultural loads a ten per cent variance up to 88,000 lb, again off the interstate. Alabama gives forest products a 102-inch width allowance and no gross variance at all.

So Alabama gives width and Georgia gives weight, and they differ from each other as much as either differs from Florida. A log truck out of Gulf County that crosses either line is not carrying the same allowance it had a mile earlier, and a rig specified for one regime is not automatically legal in the next.

Which brings up the other thing about equipment from this basin, and it is better asked than assumed. A Category 5 storm came ashore on this stretch in October 2018 and put a great deal of the pine on the ground, and the years that followed were salvage years.

So storm-damage and storm-salvage history is an ordinary question about a truck from Gulf County rather than an awkward one. Pulling downed timber off ground that was not a road is hard, useful work, and it leaves hours and a particular wear pattern rather than evidence of neglect — on a 70,000 lb single unit or an 80,000 lb combination alike.

Telling us saves us reading it off the photographs. It explains a frame and a suspension that would otherwise not match the odometer.

So it is worth having this state’s own numbers rather than the neighbours’. 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, and hard years occasionally leave a mark on it — a claim, a total loss, or a title that went somewhere and did not come back.

We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost one has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. If an insurer paid on it, Florida brands salvage at 80% of the cost to replace the vehicle with one of like kind and quality, and replacement cost is a different base from the retail or market-value ones other states use.

The plate stays in the owner’s name rather than going with the truck — onto a replacement vehicle of the same class, or back to the county tax collector.

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

All of it is iron we buy across Gulf County. Log trucks and timber rigs off the basin, flatbeds and lowboys moving equipment between tracts, dump trucks held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, day cabs and road tractors, box trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a crew — the same up at Wewahitchka and along the coast at Apalachicola.

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 ran salvage timber for two years and it looks rough. Is that a no?No. In Gulf County that is a common history and we would rather hear it than deduce it. Salvage work leaves hours and hard wear ahead of mileage on a 70,000 lb single unit or an 80,000 lb combination alike, and we do not read it as neglect.
• I run into Georgia and Alabama. Does the load change?The allowance does. Georgia gives forest loads a ten per cent variance to 88,000 lb off the interstate; Alabama gives a 102-inch width allowance and no gross variance; Florida gives ten per cent off the interstate and not to single-unit vehicles. Three regimes, one basin.
• 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 timber contract in a basin still coming back from Hurricane Michael, that ended and left one log truck standing in a Gulf County yard 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.