We buy trucks in Anna

The federal mine register records 20 employees at an independently owned quarry here. The state transport department’s approved producer list carries the same operator north-east of town, and a second record at Jonesboro five miles south.

Both state records agree with the rows. That is worth saying plainly, because agreement between independent records is the exception in this lane rather than the rule.

That second record at Jonesboro is the useful detail. One operator working two sites 5 miles apart in Union County means material and equipment move between them, so a truck based here is likelier to run a short circuit than a long delivery.

It is loaded-out, empty-back work on a small number of roads, several turns a day. Hill country roads at that, which is harder on brakes and on a driveline than 5 miles makes it sound.

So dump trucks and aggregate haulers are the local shape around a 20-employee quarry and its second site 5 miles south in Union County. That is a fact about the operator, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.

Farm trucks, grain hauls, day cabs, flatbeds, box trucks, work trucks and pickups are used everywhere, Anna included, and are bought on the same terms.

Most of the reasons people sell aren’t happy ones, 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.

Those loads all run under one set of numbers. Illinois statute 625 ILCS 5/15-111 sets 80,000 pounds gross for five or more axles, 20,000 pounds on a single axle and 34,000 pounds on a tandem, with no axle inside that tandem over 20,000 pounds, and a formula for consecutive axle groups that varies with spacing.

Local authorities and cities over 50,000 people may set their own weight limits by ordinance, but the same statute stops them exceeding the state maximums. So an Illinois local limit can only ever be lower than the state figure, never higher — which is worth knowing before you plan a route on the state number alone.

That section carries no seasonal frost provisions and no harvest or agricultural exemptions. That is scoped to that section of the statute and is not a claim that Illinois has no seasonal restriction anywhere, which we did not check.

One more number from the same code decides whether a title gets branded. Under 625 ILCS 5/3-117.1(b)(1) a vehicle is salvage once an insurance company pays a total loss claim on it, with two carve-outs: hail damage alone, where it does not affect operational safety, and any vehicle nine model years of age or older, which the registered owner may keep by agreement with the insurer. That second one is a right to ask rather than something the law does on its own. Subsection (b)(1.1) sets a separate test for self-insured companies — salvage where the repair cost, labour included, would come to more than 70% of what the vehicle was worth undamaged.