We buy trucks in West Pensacola

The yard filed under West Pensacola is the southern end of the Alabama & Gulf Coast Railway, which runs 267 miles from Columbus, Mississippi down to Pensacola. Of those, 228 miles are in Alabama.

The coordinate for it actually falls inside Pensacola city rather than West Pensacola, and Pensacola has a page of its own. We are saying so instead of quietly moving the pin: thirteen of Florida’s seventy rail-yard rows are attached to a city other than the best one available, and this is one of them.

So the interesting fact about hauling out of here is not the road surface. It is that the road crosses a state line 10 miles west, and the rulebook changes with it while nothing underneath the tyres does.

Alabama gives forest products a 102-inch width allowance and no gross variance at all. Florida gives a divisible-load permit of ten per cent over gross that is void on the interstate system. Same commodity, two entirely different instruments — one about how wide, the other about how heavy and on which road.

The railroad alongside makes the same point in reverse: of the Gulf Coast Railway’s 267 miles, 228 are in Alabama and the yard is at the Florida end of it.

A truck working both sides of that line is running under two rulebooks in a single day, and the odometer does not know the difference. It is worth having in mind when you describe how a truck has been used.

Both of those rulebooks stop mattering on the day the truck is sold, and what is left is the paperwork.

Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route.

Two Florida specifics sit behind it: the plate stays in the owner’s name and comes off the truck rather than going with it, and where an insurer has paid a total loss, an electronic lien recorded on the title is what actually holds the process up.

Fla. Stat. § 320.0609(1)(a) and § 319.30. Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy, on either side of the 10 miles between here and the state line. Log trucks and timber rigs off the woods work. Flatbeds and day cabs off the Alabama & Gulf Coast Railway yard. Dump trucks, straight trucks, box trucks, 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 truck is titled in Alabama and parked here. Does that complicate it?No. Trucks working the Gulf Coast Railway end of the panhandle cross those 10 miles constantly, and we handle the paperwork either way round.
• 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 contract that finished and left one flatbed spare at a yard off the Gulf Coast Railway, 10 miles from a state line that would have put the same load under a different rulebook.

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.