We buy trucks in Carnesville

The quarry here reports 9 employees to the mine regulator and sits 0.91 miles from the centroid of the place the node list names, which after a lane full of rows attached to towns they are not in earns exactly one clause. The fact that shapes this page is a different one: no confident match was found for it on the state qualified products list.

That list is a qualified-products list, so absence from it means the source is not qualified for Georgia state highway work rather than that it is not operating. Small, idle and unqualified are three different things and only the third is established.

Here is the line this page will not cross. That the customer mix is therefore private and county supply is a reasoned inference and not a measured fact, and the record says so in those words. It is a likely reading. It is not a measurement, and keeping the two apart is the whole reason to say it out loud rather than to print the conclusion and let it look like data.

One consequence is real either way: with no qualified source code, no character, abrasion loss, absorption or soundness figure appears on this page. There is nothing measured about the rock here to print.

Those private and county customers raise a question about where they are, and the answer runs into a border. The South Carolina line is close, and Georgia’s rules stop at the Savannah River.

There is no South Carolina rule file in this research and South Carolina was not researched, so nothing is stated either way about what applies over there. Not that it is stricter, not that it is looser, not that it matches.

What can be offered is the border-county reading this research established at Preble County, Ohio and at Simpson County, Kentucky: an operator working two regimes specifies for whichever is stricter. That is a general finding about how border operations behave, and it is offered as one rather than as a measurement of this pit.

The practical version for somebody selling a truck: if it worked both sides, its specification was probably set by the tighter of the two rule sets, and neither of those rule sets is on this page in full.

So the measured part of this page is the road network, and it is measured properly. Within ten miles the 2025 national bridge inventory records 134 structures, of which 23 are coded posted for load and 16 of those are county-maintained. The nearest posting is 1.5 miles out and the lowest operating rating among them is 5.4 metric tonnes.

Twenty-two of the twenty-three clear the 11.0-tonne commercial floor, so the 5.4-tonne crossing is not a commercial route and the cap that binds a loaded vehicle is 19.9 metric tonnes, about 21.9 US tons — roughly 8.9 tonnes of stone over the tare of an empty tandem dump, against the twenty-five or so a legal 80,000 lb truck carries.

Across Franklin County as a whole, 13 of 65 county-maintained bridges are posted: 20.0%.

Those are the figures a seller can actually check against a route, which is more than this page can offer about the rock.

Those crossings are the ceiling that binds. The statute sets the other one. 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.

Franklin County is not among the thirteen, so the variance is available at this location to timber and to agriculture. Crushed stone is neither.

And the allowance stops where the state does. It is conditioned on Georgia state and local roads, so a load that qualifies here has it until the river and not past it, whatever South Carolina may or may not permit on its own network.

Then the inversion. 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 not a step — Franklin County is not among the thirteen, and diesel and anything above 8,500 lb rated gross are outside the programme regardless.

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 on the private and county runs out of the pit. Day cabs and road tractors on the trips over the Savannah River. Timber rigs and farm trucks on the loads that do qualify across Franklin County. 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 quarry is not on the state list. Is something wrong with it?Not that anyone established. A qualified-products list records what is approved for state highway work, so absence means unqualified for that work rather than small or idle. What it actually supplies was not measured and we are not going to assert it.
• Half its work was in South Carolina. Does that change anything?Not for us. It is on the page because the Savannah River is where Georgia’s rules stop, and what applies on the far side was not researched here, so this page says nothing about it in either direction.
• Is anybody driving out to Franklin County for one truck?Often nobody has to. We buy it remotely and arrange the tow, which is usually the least trouble. 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 Franklin County, and what sits behind it has nothing to do with the Savannah River or with a 19.9-tonne cap 1.5 miles up the road.

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.