We buy trucks in West Palm Beach

The largest employer in our Palm Beach County file is White Rock Quarries, and the bridge work around it is some of the most detailed we hold. It would be easy to open this page with it.

It would also be wrong. The address on that registration is a West Palm Beach one and the pit is 58 miles away in Miami-Dade County. The county field and the coordinate agree with each other; the city field agrees with neither. That is an office address rather than a geography, and it is the commonest way a page about one town ends up describing another.

So we are reporting the distance instead of quietly resolving it. There is a quarry, it employs 205 people, and it is not here.

That leaves what is genuinely local, and on this coast it starts underneath the truck.

The military row we hold in Palm Beach County is a Navy reserve centre near the water, and White Rock Quarries is the other end of the same file. Its acreage, strength and mission were not established, so we are not going to describe it. What the location tells us is ordinary and useful: coastal air puts the underside first on any inspection — frame rails, crossmembers, brake and air lines, electrical grounds, body mounts.

None of that stops us buying. It does mean the first place we look is not the first place a seller expects, and a truck that has been washed underneath through its life shows it.

Those inspections are about the truck. The law is about the load, and Florida splits it by road.

FDOT may permit a commercial vehicle to run up to ten per cent over its legal gross weight, and that permission stops at the interstate system. A permitted truck on I-95 is over weight; the same truck on a state road is not. It has been on that footing since July 2010.

There is a second limb worth knowing if you run a dump truck or a mixer: single-unit vehicles of that kind are capped at 70,000 lb gross in their own right, and the ten per cent does not reach them at all.

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

Both limbs of that rule describe a truck on the road. The title question is about what has already happened to it.

Florida brands a vehicle salvage where the cost of repair equals or exceeds 80 per cent of the cost to replace it with a vehicle of like kind and quality. The percentage travels between states and the base does not. New York measures 75 per cent of retail value at the time of loss, Indiana 70 per cent of fair market value before the damage, Oregon retail market value before the damage. Grouping states by the percentage alone compares figures that do not share a denominator.

For a seller the practical part is shorter. We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one, a lost one has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route. Where an insurer has been involved, an electronic lien on the title is what actually holds it up.

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

All of that iron is iron we buy, right across Palm Beach County. Day cabs and road tractors. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, whether they load at White Rock Quarries or at a pit closer to home. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, tankers, service bodies, rollbacks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a 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 underside is rough. Is that the end of it?No. Surface corrosion is normal on the Palm Beach County coast and we expect it — and it is the same air 58 miles down the road at the pit. What matters is whether the truck is all there.
• 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, and they are the same in Palm Beach County as anywhere else — or 58 miles away in Miami-Dade, for that matter. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A season that did not come back the way it used to.

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.