We buy trucks in Progress Village

The rail row filed under Progress Village is called East Tampa. No facility-level source was found for it — not the operator, not the volume, not what moves through it — so what that yard actually does is a thing this page does not know and is not going to guess at.

That leaves a choice between writing something that sounds specific and saying what was established. What was established is the corridor this part of Hillsborough County sits on, and that turns out to be the fact with the longer reach anyway.

It is also the fact a seller can check against their own week, which the yard’s traffic would not have been.

So take the road instead of the yard. The corridor between Tampa and Orlando carries an enormous and fast-growing warehouse belt, and the research file records it as among the most congested and construction-affected freight corridors in the south-east.

What that does to a truck is specific and it is not mileage. A lane that looks like highway running on paper returns hours that a highway lane would not, because the delay is in the corridor rather than in the distance. The engine idles, the transmission cycles, and the odometer records none of it.

So on anything sold out of East Tampa or the yards around it in Hillsborough County, the odometer is the last number we read rather than the first. Hours, service history and the state of the driveline say more about the week the truck actually had.

Which is also what sets the mix across this end of Hillsborough County. A warehouse belt runs on box trucks and day cabs shuttling short and often, and the construction that keeps the corridor congested runs on dump trucks and flatbeds working the sites beside it.

Those are two different lives. A single-unit dump truck in this state is held to 70,000 lb gross where a tractor-trailer combination gets 80,000 lb, so it does its work heavy, slow and close to home. A day cab on a distribution run does the opposite and does it all day.

Both are ordinary here, and both are ordinary to us. Which of the two a truck had changes where we start reading it, not whether we buy it.

So the load rule is worth stating plainly. 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 it does not reach those single-unit vehicles at all — so the trucks that would gain most from it are the trucks it excludes.

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

Then the paperwork, which is what decides how fast a sale closes. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.

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 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. § 320.0609(1)(a). Information, not legal advice.

Those are the rules. The iron is the easy part: box trucks and straight trucks off the warehouse belt, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers 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 across Hillsborough County, up at Tampa and south at Riverview.

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.
• My paperwork says East Tampa and I have never based there. Does that matter?Not to us. The rail row filed under this page carries that name too, and it is the name of the yard rather than of the place. We read the county and the truck before the address line.
• The odometer is low but the truck feels used up. Will that count against it?No, and it is the ordinary case on this corridor. Congestion puts hours on a truck without putting miles on it, so a low reading with a tired driveline is what we expect around Hillsborough County rather than something we query.
• Do you come out?Yes. We can come to you and drive it away, or come to you and tow it. We can also buy it where it stands and arrange the tow with no visit at all, and you’re welcome to bring it to us if that suits you better.
• 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 distribution contract off the East Tampa side that went away and left one box truck standing in a Hillsborough 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.