We buy trucks in Williston

The Raleigh Quarry, worked by V E Whitehurst & Sons, carries eight people on the mine safety register and sits 1.91 miles from the centre of Williston in Levy County. Within ten miles of it the National Bridge Inventory records exactly one structure, and that one is neither posted for load nor coded below legal loads.

One row of ours was attached to its town from a name typed on a mine safety filing, which is the weakest of the methods our file uses, and this is one of them. The coordinate backs it up at 1.91 miles, so here the weak method landed correctly — but it is the sort of thing we would rather say than leave for someone to find.

So it is worth saying what a one-bridge figure actually means before anybody reads too much into it. The single structure is 8.77 miles out. The next one is 10.80 miles out, just past the line, and 72 lie within twenty miles of the same point.

Move the circle a few hundred metres and this stops being a one-bridge node. We publish a ten-mile figure because ten miles is a defensible first haul, and this row is about as clear a demonstration as the research has that the number is a property of the radius as well as of the place. It is a thin network out here. It is not an empty one.

Which is the same mistake in a different form, and it is one worth not making. Levy County posts nine of the 28 bridges it maintains — 32.1% — while this quarry meets a single structure of any kind inside ten miles, and the Levy County Pit over at Bronson meets six. All three numbers are true and none of them predicts the others.

The thinness does cluster, though. Every one of the thinnest road networks measured anywhere across the fifteen states in this research is in this state, and they cluster in the north-central limestone belt of Alachua, Levy, Marion and Suwannee counties — the ground under Newberry and here.

What that means for a truck is that route choice is about distance and which way out exists rather than about anything painted on a crossing. The long two-lane runs out to Gainesville, Ocala and the coast are the shape of the working day.

Which leaves the limit that binds, because nothing on this network is going to impose a lower one.

Florida allows 80,000 lb gross including all enforcement tolerances and 20,000 lb on a single axle, and holds a single-unit vehicle used as a dump truck, a concrete mixer, a waste collection vehicle or a fuel tanker to 70,000 lb instead. The divisible-load permit that adds ten per cent over legal gross, off the interstate system only, does not reach that class at all.

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

Those stop mattering the day the truck changes hands, and the paperwork is what is left.

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.

Storage is the part with a clock on it. A towing and storage operator holding a vehicle 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 can reach a public sale in 35 days.

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

All of it is iron we buy across Levy 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 long runs out. Flatbeds, box trucks and straight trucks, tankers, rollbacks, service bodies, farm trucks 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.
• There is almost nothing out here. Do you still come?Yes. Levy County is a long two-lane run and that is our end of it, and the Raleigh Quarry end of it is no exception. Where the drive makes no sense we buy the truck where it stands and arrange the tow instead.
• Are there bridges that will stop the truck?Not inside ten miles of the quarry — the one structure there is neither posted nor coded below legal loads. Past that the network thickens quickly: 72 structures lie within twenty miles, so the route is worth a look rather than an assumption.
• 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 small outfit in Levy County winding down with one dump truck still on the yard, 1.91 miles from the middle of town, a short run from the Raleigh Quarry it worked out of, and a long way from the next job.

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.