We buy trucks in Wahneta

The row here is the Central Florida Intermodal Logistics Center, a purpose-built intermodal and distribution hub operated by CSX. It sits at Winter Haven and is filed in our node list under Wahneta, a small Polk County community 2.49 miles away. Its lift volume, acreage and tenant list were not determined, and no figure for any of them appears here.

The coordinate itself falls inside Winter Haven, which holds a page of its own, so the name on the row and the town on the row are two different places. We publish that rather than quietly moving it, because the yard name is what a driver would recognise.

So it is worth being precise about which kind of terminal this is, because the two kinds work on a truck in opposite directions. Everything reaching this peninsula by rail comes through one gate up at Jacksonville. A terminal in the middle of the peninsula therefore shortens the truck leg for everything south of it, which is what the Central Florida Intermodal Logistics Center is doing for Polk County and for everything below it.

A near-dock terminal sitting at a port does the reverse and lengthens local drayage. Both are true of intermodal terminals and which one applies depends entirely on where the terminal sits. This one sits inland, so the trucks working it run longer, steadier legs out to the coasts rather than short shuttles — and Jacksonville is the gate they are all downstream of.

Which follows from being the middle of everything. Fourteen of the seventy rail rows our file holds in this state are in Polk County, more than any other county in it, and the next is nine. Six of the fourteen sit around Mulberry, three at Bradley Junction, two at Lakeland Highlands, and one each at Inwood, Lakeland and here.

Ten sand and gravel pits sit in the same county alongside them. So the iron on these roads is a mix of yard work and pit work, often on the same day and often on the same truck, and neither of those is what the odometer is measuring.

Those pit loads run under a schedule with one limb that this trade feels and most others do not.

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 a single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker, which is 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.

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.

The plate is the part people are caught by. Florida keeps the registration and the plate in the owner’s name and does not allow them to be handed on with the vehicle, so the plate comes off and goes onto another vehicle of the same class or back to the county tax collector.

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

All of it is iron we buy across Polk County. Day cabs and road tractors off the intermodal legs. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the pits, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Flatbeds, box trucks and straight trucks, 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.
• Is this the Winter Haven terminal?It is. The coordinate falls inside Winter Haven; our node list files the row under Wahneta, 2.49 miles away. Same facility, two names on the paperwork, and we buy on either side of that line.
• The truck splits its week between the ramp and a pit. Does that matter?It matters to the picture, not to whether we buy. Ramp and pit work is hours and loading cycles rather than highway miles, and that wear is invisible on the dash. Tell us and we read it properly.
• 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 haul contract off the intermodal end in Polk County that finished and left one road tractor standing with nothing booked for it, 2.49 miles from the Winter Haven terminal it used to run into.

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.