We buy trucks in Webster

The Mazak Mine, worked by Mid-Coast Aggregates, carries 24 people on the mine safety register and sits in Sumter County. Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records 23 structures: three are posted for load, one is coded below legal loads, and the nearest of those is 6.49 miles away.

Five of the seven rows our file holds in this county are crushed-stone quarries — two of them up at Coleman, where a cement plant sits alongside, and the St Catherine Mine at Bushnell. This is limerock country and the trucks on these roads are the trucks that work it.

One caveat on the geography, because we would rather state it than have it found. This row was attached to its town from the name typed on the mine safety filing, which is the least reliable of the methods our file uses. Here the coordinate agrees with it — 4.30 miles from the centre of Webster — so on this row the weak method landed in the right place.

So the ownership of that crossing matters more than the count does. The restricted structure 6.49 miles from the Mazak Mine is numbered 180806 and it carries a state forest road: the National Bridge Inventory codes its maintaining agency as a state park, forest or reservation agency. None of the restricted structures within ten miles of this mine in Sumter County is county-maintained.

That matters because the county is the tier a seller can actually telephone about a sign. Florida’s structures sit under four separate tiers — the state holds 45.1%, the counties 31.0%, and a state toll authority and the cities most of the rest — and here the one that binds belongs to none of the two you would try first.

Which is the part that reaches the truck. The lowest usable rating on that crossing is 17.5 metric tonnes, about 19.3 US tons, and the National Bridge Inventory records the gross weight of the rating vehicle rather than the payload. Over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump, that leaves roughly 6.5 tonnes of stone.

Read it in three bands and it stops being abstract. Below 11.0 tonnes no commercial vehicle crosses at all, even empty. Between 11.0 and 36.3 tonnes it crosses part loaded. At or above 36.3 tonnes a legal load crosses whole. And for this trade the useful band closes 4.5 tonnes lower still, because a single-unit dump truck is capped below the combination figure.

The nearest such crossing is 6.49 miles off, so it is a route question rather than a daily one. Out toward Leesburg and the rest of Sumter County it does not arise.

Those bands are only useful with the schedule behind them, and it is worth having exactly, because most of the argument on a weighbridge is about which subsection applies.

Florida sets a single axle at 20,000 lb and a gross limit of 80,000 lb including all enforcement tolerances. 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 — 31.75 tonnes — and the divisible-load permit that adds ten per cent off the interstate system does not reach that class.

Fla. Stat. § 316.535, subsections (1), (4), (5) and (6), with § 316.550(4). Information, not legal advice.

Those are the load. The paperwork is what decides how quickly a sale closes, and one part of it runs on a clock.

We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one; a lost one has a counter replacement; where neither exists there is a bonded route. The plate stays in the owner’s name and comes off the truck.

If a truck is sitting at a towing and storage operator, that is the one to move on. The operator has a lien for recovery, towing and storage, must send notice by certified mail to the registered owner, the insurer and any lienholder within five business days, and on a vehicle more than three years old the route to a public sale is 35 days.

Fla. Stat. § 713.78, with § 320.0609(1)(a). Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy across Sumter County. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the limerock, held to 70,000 lb where a combination gets 80,000 lb. Day cabs and road tractors for the longer runs, flatbeds, box trucks, tankers, mixers, 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 there a bridge that stops me getting the truck out?Not on the way we would come. One crossing within ten miles is coded below legal loads and it is 6.49 miles off, on a state forest road. We plan the route at our end across Sumter County, and if it is awkward we tow instead.
• Who do I ring about a posted sign out here?Usually the county — but not for that one. The inventory codes its maintaining agency as a state park, forest or reservation agency, so the county is not the tier holding it. That is unusual enough to be worth knowing.
• 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 limerock contract in Sumter County that ended and left one dump truck standing on a yard with nothing booked for it, 4.30 miles from the middle of town and a short run from the Mazak Mine it used to load at.

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.