We buy trucks in Sanford

Two rail rows sit under Sanford and neither is what the type says. One carries Central Florida Commuter Rail Transit — SunRail — which is passenger infrastructure filed in the rail-yard type. Florida is the fourth state where we have found that happen, after California, Connecticut and Delaware.

The other is the southern terminus of Amtrak’s Auto Train, a scheduled service between Virginia and Florida whose freight is passengers’ own vehicles. It moves cars, but not the way a car hauler does.

No facility-level source was found for either. So this page is not going to describe freight traffic through a pair of passenger facilities, because there is none to describe and inventing it would be the easiest mistake on the page.

So what actually puts trucks in Sanford is the corridor rather than either terminal. The I-4 belt between Tampa and Orlando holds an enormous and fast-growing warehouse estate, and it is among the most congested and construction-affected freight corridors in the south-east.

That matters for a specific and slightly counter-intuitive reason: hours run ahead of miles here even on lanes that look like highway running. A tractor booked on what reads as a motorway lane can spend a large part of its day stationary or crawling through a work zone.

So an odometer from this corridor understates the work, in the same way a pit truck’s does but for the opposite cause. It is not short legs; it is long legs that do not move. Neither the Auto Train terminal nor the Central Florida Commuter Rail Transit platforms put a lorry on that road — the warehouse belt does.

Which is why the hour meter is the number we would rather have from an I-4 tractor, and why idle time is worth a sentence when you call.

Constant low-speed running and stop-start work in traffic wear a driveline and a cooling system differently from steady road speed. On the Auto Train and Central Florida Commuter Rail Transit side of town the yard work adds coupling cycles on top of it.

None of that is a mark against a vehicle. It is the normal shape of a truck that has worked between Tampa and Orlando, and describing it accurately gets you a better conversation than an odometer reading does.

Which sets up the awkward part of the weight rule for anybody working this corridor.

Florida’s divisible-load permit adds ten per cent over legal gross weight, off the interstate system only. The corridor that generates the freight here is an interstate, so a permitted truck running ten per cent over has to leave the road that makes the run worth doing. And the ten per cent never reaches a single-unit dump truck, mixer, waste vehicle or fuel tanker, which are held to 70,000 lb gross against 80,000 lb for a combination.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4), with § 316.535(6). 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.

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 it is iron we buy. Day cabs and road tractors off the warehouse belt. Box trucks and straight trucks off the last leg of it. Car haulers, which a town with the Auto Train terminal in it sees more of than most. Flatbeds, dump trucks held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups that go with a yard crew on the I-4 corridor.

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.
• The miles look like highway miles but it is worn like a city truck. Why?Because on the I-4 corridor it probably was one. Congestion and work zones put hours on a tractor that never reach the odometer, whether it is running at 80,000 lb or at the 70,000 lb a single-unit is held to.
• 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 lane on the I-4 corridor that ended and left one tractor too many standing in a warehouse yard between Tampa and Orlando, within sight of the Auto Train terminal and the Central Florida Commuter Rail Transit platforms.

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.