We buy trucks in Ball Ground

The pit here reports 18 employees to the mine regulator, and the state qualified list carries it as approved coarse aggregate source 143C, entered against 4420 Hightower Road: character of material granite gneiss and metasandstone, bulk specific gravity 2.686, a graded-aggregate-base theoretical density of 141.2 lb per cubic foot, absorption 0.56%, Los Angeles abrasion loss 39% and magnesium sulphate soundness loss 1.7%.

The unusual record is not that one. In its 2018 Competitive Impact Statement the United States named quarries at Norcross, Buford and this town as sources from which customers in the Forsyth and North Fulton County market could economically procure Georgia DOT-qualified aggregate.

That is a market area drawn by a court filing rather than guessed from a map. It says, on the government’s own analysis, which pits could economically serve which buyers — and most pages in this lane either have to infer a haul radius or decline to name one.

It is a fact about buyers, though, and not about a fleet. It does not say how the stone travelled, whose trucks moved it, or how often, and nothing about the equipment follows from it.

Those numbers include the one that matters to a truck. An abrasion loss of 39% puts this material at the degrading end of its batch: rock that gives up more of itself in the drum produces more fines in a body.

Fines pack and stick, particularly wet. So the maintenance problem from this gate is carry-back rather than wear — a floor that will not empty clean and a tailgate seal that fills — which is a different complaint from the scouring a hard low-loss rock does to floor, sides and tailgate.

The honest limit on that, as everywhere in this research: the abrasion test measures the aggregate’s own degradation and not wear on steel, so the direction of the reasoning is sound and its magnitude is not established.

No bridge count appears for this node either. None was measured anywhere near Hightower Road, and figures from a neighbouring pit would be a different claim rather than a smaller one, so none are borrowed.

Those hauls run under a rule that switches off in exactly this part of the state. O.C.G.A. § 32-6-26 puts the general gross limit at 80,000 lb on state and US highways, and HB 189 (2023), as amended by HB 164 (2025), lets forest-products and agricultural loads run ten per cent over — 88,000 lb on five axles — within 150 miles of origin, on state and local roads only, and outside the air-quality non-attainment counties. HB 164 removed the 2025 sunset, so the figure is permanent rather than temporary.

Cherokee County is one of the thirteen, so the variance does not apply at this location. And the market the court filing named — Forsyth and North Fulton — sits inside the thirteen as well, so a qualifying load leaving this gate for those buyers would be inside the excluded zone at both ends of the trip.

Crushed stone would not have qualified in any event, being neither a forest product nor an agricultural one. The allowance is doubly absent here, and the ceiling is the plain 80,000 lb.

The inversion still applies to anyone hauling something that does qualify elsewhere. Georgia state and US highways take the forest-products load at 84,000 lb including tolerances while the interstate caps at 80,000 lb plus the federal bridge formula, so the interstate is the lower limit. County roads run to 56,000 lb unless the truck is making a pickup or delivery on that road.

O.C.G.A. § 32-6-26; HB 189 (2023) as amended by HB 164 (2025). Information, not legal advice.

Those rules decide the load. This one decides the sale, and it is a single sentence.

Everything after it is a fix rather than a category. A lost title is a counter transaction at a tag office — a driver’s licence, the year, make and model, the vehicle identity number, a fee of $18, printed on the spot in about forty-five minutes depending on the line. Where no title exists, the bonded route runs through a surety company, an application with a sales document, a police inspection form confirming the vehicle is not stolen, then the tag office.

Georgia brands salvage by a total-loss formula rather than a fixed percentage, weighing repair cost against actual cash value with salvage value factored in, where Kentucky uses a flat 75% of retail and Alabama 75% of fair retail value before the damage. Under O.C.G.A. § 40-3-37 the commissioner inspects a salvaged or rebuilt vehicle before any title issues, and the rebuild has to have been done in Georgia.

Where there is a lien on it the release is the slow part. Georgia files liens electronically and a lienholder on that programme cannot issue a paper release; only lienholders holding liens on fewer than five Georgia-titled vehicles may use the paper certificate. Emissions is still not a step even though Cherokee County is one of the thirteen: diesel vehicles are exempt and anything above 8,500 lb rated gross is outside the programme entirely.

O.C.G.A. § 40-3-37; Georgia Department of Revenue title, lien and emissions guidance. Information, not legal advice.

None of that changes what we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Hightower Road gate. Day cabs and road tractors on the runs down into the metro. Timber rigs and farm trucks, which qualify for nothing extra in Cherokee County but are bought here the same. Box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, lowboys, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go out 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 and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• 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 is a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.
• The bed cakes up and will not tip clean. Is that the truck?Usually it is the rock. At an abrasion loss of 39% this material breaks down into fines under handling, and fines pack and stick when wet. Carry-back is what this stone does to a body rather than what a worn body does to it.
• Where did the stone from here actually go?The government’s 2018 filing named the Forsyth and North Fulton County market as one this pit could economically serve. That is about buyers rather than about routes, and we are not going to convert it into a haul pattern.
• Is anybody coming out to Cherokee County for one truck?Usually yes, and it is an easy run — but it is not required. We buy it remotely and arrange the tow just as readily. We also come to you and drive it away, or come to you and tow it, and you can bring it to us.

That last one is the question under most of the calls from Cherokee County, and what sits behind it has nothing to do with Hightower Road or with a competitive impact statement.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and left one machine too many in the yard. Sometimes it is only that the truck has been parked since the last load went out, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

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.