We buy trucks in Decatur

Archer Daniels Midland’s Decatur complex is the company’s North American headquarters and its single largest location anywhere — more than 4,000 people on 1,125 acres, one of the largest of over 200 manufacturing facilities worldwide.

It processes 600,000 bushels of corn and 200,000 bushels of soy a day at what is described as the largest corn wet mill in the world. Most of that corn is grown within 150 miles of the plant, and a $103 million modernisation of the Decatur operations was announced by the State of Illinois.

That last figure is the one that matters for a truck. Grain grown within 150 miles of a plant arrives by road, which makes the surrounding counties a catchment for farm trucks and grain hauls rather than a place they pass through.

Five rail-yard rows attach to Decatur under four operators — Norfolk Southern with three, Canadian National, and the Decatur & Eastern Illinois Railroad. Two of those Norfolk Southern rows lie 0.45 miles apart and are one facility recorded twice, which we note here so the count is not read as more than it is.

So farm trucks and grain hauls are the local shape, with day cabs and road tractors on the plant traffic. That is a fact about Macon County and a 150 mile grain draw, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.

Dump trucks, box trucks, flatbeds and pickups are here as well — used everywhere, and 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.

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.