We buy trucks in Virginia Gardens

The row filed here is the Florida East Coast side of a pair. Two rows in our node list carry the same yard name; they lie 3.95 miles apart and belong to different carriers, so they are two facilities sharing a place name rather than one facility entered twice. That distinction matters, because a duplicate would be a defect and this is not one.

Neither of the two is filed under the town whose name they carry, which has a page of its own. This one is attached to Virginia Gardens, 1.07 miles from the centre of the place; the other is filed over at West Little River in the same county.

So it is worth knowing how often our own file does this. Thirteen of the seventy rail rows we hold in this state are attached to a city other than the best one available, and in eight of the thirteen the yard’s own name is the right answer — both of the rows in this pair among them. Of the fifteen states measured in this research so far, this one supplies more instances of that shape than any other.

The same pattern turns up at Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. We publish it rather than quietly correcting it, because a seller reading a yard name should know it points at a facility and not at a town boundary.

Which is the other thing worth saying about freight here, and it is about direction rather than volume. This county consumes a great deal more than it produces, so the flow is overwhelmingly inbound. It is also a principal United States gateway for Latin American and Caribbean trade, and for perishables. Volumes were not determined in our research and no figure for any of that appears here.

What one-way flow does to a truck is put hours on it rather than miles: loaded in, light or empty out, short drayage legs and a lot of them, with loading and low-speed manoeuvring doing more of the wear than the driving does. Medley and Miami are the other ends of most of those legs.

Those short legs run under a schedule with one awkward limb in it for this trade.

FDOT may permit a commercial vehicle ten per cent over its legal gross weight, off the interstate highway system only, and has been able to since 1 July 2010. It may not do so for the single-unit vehicles — a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle, a fuel tanker — which are held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb including all enforcement tolerances.

Fla. Stat. § 316.550(4), with § 316.535, subsections (5) and (6). Information, not legal advice.

Both of those 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, and where none exists there is a bonded route.

Florida brands a vehicle salvage where the cost of repair reaches eighty per cent of the cost of replacing it with one of like kind and quality. The percentage is not the interesting part — the base is. Some states measure against retail value instead, which is a different number, so a branded title from elsewhere does not mean here what it meant there.

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

All of it is iron we buy across Miami-Dade County. Day cabs and road tractors off the drayage legs. Box trucks and straight trucks off route work. 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 small crew.

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 truck has high hours but low miles. Is that a problem?No, and on short drayage legs it is normal. Tell us the hours as well as the odometer — it is invisible on the dash otherwise, and we would rather have the real picture.
• Which yard is which?Two rows carry the same name 3.95 miles apart under different carriers. This page is the Florida East Coast one; the other is filed under West Little River. Neither is filed under the town they are named for.
• 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 drayage contract in Miami-Dade County that ended and left one day cab standing on a yard 1.07 miles from the middle of town, 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.