We buy trucks in Gordon

This county lies in Georgia’s kaolin belt. Kaolin is an open-pit mined mineral and it moves from pit to processing by road, which makes it a truck commodity in a way that most minerals with a rail option are not.

It is also a commodity the weight statute does not name. The ten per cent variance covers forest products and agricultural products, and kaolin is neither. So on a road where a forest-products load may run 88,000 lb on five axles, a kaolin haul runs to the plain 80,000 lb cap — same county, same road, same afternoon, eight thousand pounds apart.

That is worth knowing if you are selling a truck that worked here, because it tells you what the machine was allowed to carry rather than what a neighbouring rig was. Two trucks that look identical can have led quite different lives on the same route.

Those hauls run past two rail-yard rows filed to this town, both worked by Norfolk Southern. One coordinate lies 1.31 miles from the city centroid and the other 0.46 miles, and the two sit about 0.9 miles apart.

Whether that is two facilities or one facility recorded twice was not resolved by the research batch, and the carriers cannot settle it here because they are the same. Where a pair like this appears elsewhere in the set with different operators, the operators decide it; where the names differ only by a suffix, the names decide it. Neither test applies to these two, so the question is left open rather than answered by guesswork.

What moves through either of them could not be determined from any source read for the batch. Both coordinates are the mean of a track polyline’s vertices rather than a surveyed gate, which is the derivation carried by all 2,459 rail-yard rows.

That split by commodity is the whole of the weight law here, so it is worth setting out properly. O.C.G.A. § 32-6-26 sets the general gross limit at 80,000 lb on state and US highways. 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.

Wilkinson is not one of the thirteen metro counties, so the geographic condition is satisfied and the variance is available here. The commodity condition is the one that decides each load: timber out of these woods qualifies, kaolin out of these pits does not, and both run the same roads.

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 a qualifying load gives up roughly 4,000 lb the moment it gets on an interstate. County roads run to 56,000 lb unless the truck is making a pickup or delivery on that road — and at a pit gate, the pickup is the road.

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

Those rules decide what a truck may carry. This one decides whether it can be sold, and it is a single sentence.

The rest is fixes rather than categories. 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 — the programme covers thirteen metro counties, this is not one, and diesel and anything above 8,500 lb rated gross are outside it 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 from one truck to the next. Dump trucks and haulers running kaolin from pit to plant. Farm trucks and timber rigs on the loads that do qualify for the ten per cent. Day cabs and road tractors working the two Norfolk Southern rows in town. Box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go out with a crew across Wilkinson County.

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.
• It hauled kaolin its whole life. Does the dust count against it?No. It is a pit-to-plant mineral and that is the ordinary work in Wilkinson County. What we want to know is whether the body is straight, whether it is all there, and what the hours are if the machine has a meter.
• Two yards show on the map and I only know one. Which is which?We cannot tell you, and neither could the research. The two rows sit about 0.9 miles apart under Norfolk Southern, and whether that is two facilities or one recorded twice was not resolved. It makes no difference to selling your truck.
• Is anybody driving down here for it?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 Wilkinson County, and the reason behind it has nothing to do with kaolin or with a Norfolk Southern row.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A hauling contract that ended and left one machine too many standing at a pit. Sometimes it is only that the truck has been parked since the last run, 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.