Alexander County
The southernmost point in the state, where two rivers meet
Cairo sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the southernmost point in Illinois. Two rail-yard rows attach to it under two carriers — the Shawnee Terminal Railway 0.62 miles from the city centroid, and Canadian National 1.24 miles out.
What either of them handles we could not establish. No source read for this batch names the commodities at either yard, so this page does not claim any.
Source: city-pages node-list, checked 2026-08-24.
Two rivers is a routing fact before it is anything else
That confluence is the thing to hold onto. A town at the bottom of a state, with major water on two sides, has a small number of ways in and out, and everything that leaves Alexander County by road leaves on one of them.
It also means a short-line railway and a trunk carrier share a very small town. The Shawnee Terminal Railway is a terminal road, which is a switching operation rather than a long-distance one, so what it generates is local: day cabs and flatbeds moving between a yard and whatever is nearby.
Few roads out, and the same ones every day. That is a particular kind of wear and you will know it better than a map does.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change
So day cabs and flatbeds are the shapes that fit two carriers in a river town, the Shawnee Terminal Railway yard 0.62 miles out among them. That is a fact about Alexander County, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.
Dump trucks, box trucks, straight trucks, work trucks and pickups are used everywhere, Cairo included, and are bought on exactly 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.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. A missing bumper is fine.
Illinois law
What the state lets a truck carry
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.
Source: Illinois General Assembly, 625 ILCS 5/15-111 and 5/3-117.1. Checked 2026-08-23.
Questions we get asked
- Does it have to run?No. We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it — but a truck that doesn’t start and is otherwise all there is fine. A missing bumper is fine.
- What about the title?We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. If yours is lost, a replacement is an $18 counter transaction. If there has never been one, there is a bonded route.
- Do you come out this far?Yes. Whether you’re alongside the Shawnee Terminal yard 0.62 miles from the centroid or nowhere near it, we come to you. We buy across Alexander County, and in Tamms, Joppa and Cypress as well — getting to you is our problem, not yours.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup. That is the whole of it.