We buy trucks in The Villages

The rail row filed under this page is called Wildwood. It sits inside Wildwood city, which is named for it, and which has a page of its own. So the file has advertised a working rail yard to a retirement community while the town it is actually in was sitting there the whole time with an entry of its own.

That shape is not rare in this state. Thirteen of the seventy rail-yard rows the file holds here are attached to a city other than the best one available, and in eight of those the yard’s own name was the correct answer all along — Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach among them. This state supplies more instances of this shape than any state in the survey so far.

This is the sharpest of them, and it is worth being plain about: the yard belongs on the neighbouring page, not on this one.

So take the yard off the page and look at what is left, because what is left is unusual. This is a very large retirement community, and it and Sumter County around it are among the fastest-growing areas in the country — a large consumer market with essentially no production in it.

For freight that produces one specific problem. Everything comes in and very little goes out, so the backhaul is acute here in a way it is not in a town with a factory or a pit in it. A truck delivering into this market from Lake Panasoffkee or anywhere else outside it is a truck that is likely running empty one way.

Empty running is hard on a business and easy on iron, which is a combination we see often around here. It tends to produce a truck in fair mechanical order attached to a route that stopped paying.

Which shapes what actually turns over. A market of this size runs on box trucks and straight trucks doing deliveries, service bodies and pickups behind trades working the properties, and day cabs bringing the freight in from outside Sumter County.

The heavy end is thinner but it is here: construction on the growth itself, which runs dump trucks and flatbeds. A single-unit dump truck in this state is held to 70,000 lb gross where a tractor-trailer combination gets 80,000 lb, and on residential construction it works close to home and near that ceiling.

All of it is ordinary to us. What the truck did changes where we start reading it, not whether we buy it.

So the load rule is worth stating. 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 — it is void on the interstate itself — and it does not reach those single-unit vehicles at all.

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.

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.

All of that is iron we buy across Sumter County. Box trucks and straight trucks off the delivery round, service bodies and the pickups behind a trade, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb, flatbeds, tankers and rollbacks — the same over at Wildwood and north at Lady Lake.

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 yard on my paperwork is in the next town. Does that matter?Not to us, and here the file agrees with your paperwork rather than with itself — the rail row named Wildwood sits in Wildwood city and is filed under this page. We read the coordinate and the county before the city field.
• It runs empty half the time. Does light loading count against it?No. A market this size across Sumter County takes freight in and sends little out, so empty running one way is the ordinary shape from here over to Lady Lake. It is easier on the iron than loaded running, and we read the truck we are shown.
• 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 delivery contract into Sumter County that went away and left one box truck standing in a yard near Lady Lake 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.