Cook County
One yard, and three towns with a claim on it
The Markham yard is operated by Canadian National and its recorded coordinate lies 0.43 miles from the East Hazel Crest centroid. Three municipalities appear on that single row and no two of them agree. It is named for Markham, a separate city nearby that holds its own page. It is filed to East Hazel Crest. And its coordinate falls inside Harvey, which holds a page too.
That is worth stating as a warning rather than as a curiosity. A rule that read a row’s name as its city would put this yard in a third municipality — neither the one it is filed to nor the one it physically stands in.
Sources: the city-pages node list, its rail-yard coordinate note and the US Census geocoder, checked 2026-08-24.
The ramp two tenths of a mile away got the geography right
A Canadian National container ramp sits 0.20 miles from that yard, recorded as TOFC/COFC with a 150-mile drayage draw — and it is filed to Harvey, the same city the yard’s own coordinate lands in. Two records a couple of hundred yards apart, one carrier between them, and they went to two different pages. The one that matched its own ground was the ramp.
None of that changes the gate for a driver. What does change is the work behind it. The 75 miles filed on a yard is a slice-wide constant flagged as estimated; the ramp’s 150 miles is a real statement about how far a container travels before an over-the-road move competes. Two facilities, two reaches, one small village sitting between them.
Ramp runs are long and steady, yard runs short and constant. A truck that did both wears like neither.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change
So day cabs and road tractors are the ordinary shape around a Canadian National yard and the ramp beside it, with box trucks and straight trucks on the warehouse side of this part of Cook County. That is a read off two records, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.
Dump trucks, flatbeds, farm trucks, work trucks and pickups are used everywhere, East Hazel Crest included, and the offer is made the same way on any of them.
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, whichever of the three towns the paperwork picked. 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 something to check 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.
Source: Illinois General Assembly, 625 ILCS 5/15-111. 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. Those are the three cases people actually arrive with.
- Do you come out this far?Yes — and if it suits you better we can buy it remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody waits about on the day. We buy across southern Cook County, and in Harvey, Markham and Hazel Crest 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.