We buy trucks in St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg sits on a peninsula inside a peninsula. Pinellas County is very nearly surrounded by water, and the ways on and off it are a small number of bridges carrying a large number of trucks.

That shapes a working day more than any mileage figure does. Queueing at a crossing is an ordinary part of the day here, and when one is shut there is rarely a short way round — the alternative is the next bridge, which can be a long way up or down the county.

Where Florida publishes its posted-bridge list is something we could not establish, and that gap matters more here than in most places. So we are not going to tell you which crossings are posted. What we can say is that planning a route around water is the normal case on this peninsula rather than the exception.

It is also worth knowing who owns a crossing, because nobody can tell by looking. The National Bridge Inventory records every structure in the state across four tiers of ownership — FDOT, the counties, a state toll authority and the cities — and which tier holds a given bridge is not something a driver sees.

So a truck working out of Pinellas County can carry a large number and have done less revenue work than the number suggests. The rail yard here sits at the end of a branch serving a consumer city: what arrives is inbound distribution, and there is very little waiting to be loaded in the other direction.

The pattern that produces is short legs, many drops, and a great deal of time on the brakes and in traffic rather than at road speed. It is hard on a truck in a way a long run is not, and none of it reaches the odometer.

And it is the traffic doing it rather than the roads, which are among the mildest we have measured anywhere. A single-unit dump truck working out of here is held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, so it makes more trips for the same tonnage — more hours again, and the odometer shows none of them either.

You know better than we do what that does to a truck over a few years. When you tell us about it, the hours and the habit say more to us than the reading does.

Those short legs run under a weight rule that is not the same for every truck on the road.

Florida sets a single axle at 20,000 lb and a gross of 80,000 lb including all enforcement tolerances. But 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 — ten thousand pounds under what the same weight is allowed as a combination.

There is a permit that lets FDOT allow ten per cent over legal gross, and it is void on the interstate system. It also does not reach those single-unit vehicles. So the trucks doing the heaviest short-radius work here are the ones the permit leaves out, which is worth saying plainly rather than quoting the ten per cent as though it were general.

Fla. Stat. § 316.535 and § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the state rule file was last verified.

Both of those rules end in the same place, which is the paperwork.

Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither one stops a sale.

Two Florida details are worth knowing before you start. The plate belongs to you and not to the truck — the registration and the plate stay in the owner’s name, so a seller takes it off and either moves it to another vehicle of the same class or surrenders it to the county tax collector. And where an insurer has paid a total loss, an electronic lien recorded on the title is the thing that actually holds the process up.

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

All of that iron is iron we buy. Box trucks and straight trucks off the distribution end of the work. Day cabs and road tractors. Dump trucks, flatbeds, service bodies, rollbacks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew. Most of it works inside Pinellas County and crosses the bridges rather than running a highway leg.

Dump trucks and mixers included, and those are the two Florida caps at 70,000 lb rather than the 80,000 lb a combination gets.

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 has never left the county. Does that count against it?No. Low miles and heavy hours is the normal shape of a truck here and we read it that way.
• 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.
• Do you cross the bridges to collect?Yes, and it is not something you need to price into your decision. Getting the truck off Pinellas County is our end of it, whether it is an 80,000 lb combination or a 70,000 lb single-unit.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its turns, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and left one van too many in a Pinellas County yard, or a single-unit dump truck standing idle against a 70,000 lb ceiling that never let it earn what a combination could.

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.