We buy trucks in Ringgold

The quarry here reports 9 employees to the mine regulator, which makes it a small operation with a well-documented rock. GDOT’s Qualified Products List QPL-2, in the revision of 17 August 2026, lists it at 67 Lovinggood Road as an approved coarse aggregate source, code 122C, with the character of material given as “Dolomite / Limestone”.

The numbers on that entry are a bulk specific gravity of 2.714, a theoretical density for graded aggregate base of 150.8 lb per cubic foot, absorption 0.46%, a Los Angeles abrasion loss of 25% and a magnesium sulphate soundness loss of 2.6%.

Twenty-five is a low loss. The abrasion test tumbles graded aggregate with steel spheres and reports the percentage that breaks down, so a low number describes a rock that arrives more or less as it left. Across the Georgia sources matched in this research the loss runs from 17 to 55, and 25 sits well inside the tough half of that range.

Which points the maintenance in a particular direction. A rock that does not degrade acts on a body by scouring — abrasion on the floor, the sides and the tailgate — rather than by breaking into fines that pack and stick. The direction of that is sound; the magnitude is not established, because the test measures the aggregate’s own degradation and not wear on steel.

Those are Georgia’s figures, and Georgia is not the only state that has looked at this pit. Tennessee DOT’s Producer List carries the operation as an approved out-of-state aggregate source, producer code 59900099, entered as “Midsouth Aggregates - Ringgold Georgia” and matched to this node by coordinate at 0.57 miles.

Only facilities on that list are approved for use on a Tennessee DOT project, so the register establishes that stone from here supplies Tennessee highway work rather than leaving it to inference. Ninety-nine of that list’s 278 approved aggregate producers are out of state, and 34 of those match rows already researched in Georgia, Kentucky and Alabama.

So this source is qualified in both directions — on the Georgia list and on the Tennessee one — which is not true of every operation in this lane. It also settles something about the driving: a truck out of this gate plausibly spent a good part of its working life ending trips in another state.

And it gets nothing for it. Georgia’s ten per cent variance is a forest-products and agricultural provision that does not reach crushed stone and is void on the interstate, and Tenn. Code Ann. 55-7-203(b)(7) does not name crushed stone either. A load from this source carries no commodity allowance in either state.

One footnote on the operator string, because it looks like a change of hands and is really a court order: Midsouth Aggregates traces to the 2018 antitrust remedy requiring divestiture of a Martin Marietta quarry to Midsouth Paving, Inc., a subsidiary of CRH plc.

That is where the record stops, and the stopping point should be stated plainly. Most quarry pages in this lane can say how many structures inside a ten-mile circle are posted for load, how many of those are county-maintained, and which rating actually binds a loaded vehicle. The record for this node carries none of it.

So none of it is printed. It would be easy to reach for a neighbouring county’s posting rate and present it as the shape of the roads here, and that is a different claim from a measurement at this point — the two are not interchangeable, and a page that swaps one for the other has quietly invented its best number.

What the record does carry about the county comes from the other node filed to this town: the coordinate of a National Guard vehicle and equipment site reverse-geocodes to Catoosa County. That is the whole of that entry. No employment figure, no commodity, no traffic.

So the honest description of the road network around this gate is that it was not established, and the useful question to ask a seller is which way their loaded trucks turned rather than which crossings a page can name.

Those unknowns are local. The statute is not, and it is the same everywhere in 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.

Catoosa County is not among the thirteen, so the variance is available at this location — to timber and to agriculture. Crushed stone is neither, so the pit runs to the plain limit on both sides of the line.

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 — and at a quarry gate, the delivery 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 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 — Catoosa 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 off the Lovinggood Road gate and over the line. Day cabs and road tractors on the through runs. Timber rigs and farm trucks on the loads that do qualify across Catoosa 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 body is scoured rather than caked. Is that unusual?Not for this rock. At an abrasion loss of 25% the material does not break down much under handling, so it abrades a floor and sides rather than packing into them. It is a different maintenance problem from a soft rock, not a worse one.
• It ran into Tennessee a lot. Does that matter to you?Not to the offer. It matters only because the Tennessee DOT Producer List carries this source, so out-of-state work here is the register’s expectation rather than an oddity in a logbook.
• Is anybody driving up to Catoosa 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 Catoosa County, and what sits behind it has nothing to do with Lovinggood Road or with a producer code.

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.