Massac County
A cement plant at the bottom of the state, and its ring reaches six states
The Amrize Joppa Plant is carried as a facility operation working cement, MSHA identifier 1100786, operator of record Amrize Cement Inc., and it reports 73 employees. That is an order of magnitude above the pits this lane usually writes about, and cement moves differently from stone: it leaves in pressurised tankers rather than on open dumps.
The ring filed against it is 150 miles, and 456 records of any kind fall inside — but only 108 of them are in Illinois. The rest are spread across Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas. The nearest are close to home: the Massac-Metropolis Port at 9.26 miles and the Cypress Plant 10.63 miles off in Johnson County.
Sources: MSHA Mine Data Retrieval System and the city-pages node list, checked 2026-08-24.
That reach is what puts six states on one truck’s paperwork
Those proportions are the practical fact here. When the ring is 150 miles and under a quarter of what is inside it is in your own state — 108 records against 456 — interstate running is not an occasional job out of Massac County, and apportioned registration and fuel tax reporting across several jurisdictions become the ordinary condition of the vehicle rather than a special arrangement.
One material note, stated as a property of the rock rather than a measurement here. The federal silica rule sets a permissible exposure limit of 50 micrograms per cubic metre with an action level of 25, and the metal and nonmetal compliance date of 8 April 2026 is past. The host rock at a cement operation is carbonate rather than quartz, so its exposure profile differs from a granite or sandstone pit. No exposure figure for this site was found and none is claimed.
Long interstate legs under a heavy tank. Engine hours and brakes both.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change
So cement tankers and road tractors are the ordinary shape around Amrize Cement and its 73 people, with dump trucks and aggregate haulers on the Massac County ground and flatbeds across the rest. That is a read off the mine register, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.
Day cabs, box trucks, straight trucks, farm trucks, work trucks and pickups are used everywhere, Joppa 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. 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 checking 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 a counter transaction at the Secretary of State. 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?We do — and down here it is often simplest to buy it remotely and arrange the tow, particularly for a truck whose last run finished in another state. We buy across Massac County, into Johnson County and Pope County, and in Metropolis, Brookport and Vienna — getting to you is our problem, not yours.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup. That is the whole of it.