Cook County
Three yards called Proviso, all one carrier, all inside two miles
PROVISO #9 is worked by Union Pacific and its coordinate lies 0.68 miles from the Northlake centroid, inside the place rather than near it. Two more rows called PROVISO sit under the same carrier close by — one at Elmhurst 1.69 miles off, one at Stone Park 1.95 miles off.
A numbered sub-designation on a very large classification yard is ordinarily part of that yard. But elsewhere in this same data a different facility number marks a genuinely different facility. Both readings are recorded here and neither is adopted, because nothing read for this page settles it.
Source: city-pages node list from the FRA rail yards layer, checked 2026-08-22.
Sixty-one yards and thirteen carriers is an interchange, not a corridor
Those three rows sit in a county carrying 61 recorded rail yards across 13 different carriers, plus 16 intermodal ramps. Northlake holds one of those ramps itself, recorded as Global II under Union Pacific, alongside the yard — two Cook County rows in one small place.
That density is what makes the truck work here what it is. Where thirteen carriers meet, a large share of what moves does so between two railroads over a short road leg — drayage, transfer, and delivery measured in single-figure miles. It is a different working day from line-haul, and it is hard on equipment in a different way.
The commodities handled at the Proviso #9 yard could not be determined from any source read for this batch, so nothing about what moves through it is claimed here.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change
Drayage tractors and day cabs do the running between yards and ramps, box trucks and straight trucks do the delivery leg, and the four crushed-stone operations recorded in the same county — the McCook Quarry and Federal Underground among them, about 9 miles southeast — still put dump bodies on the road. That is a fact about 97 recorded sites in Cook County, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.
Day cabs, flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks, work trucks and pickups are used everywhere 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 backed onto the Proviso yards, out by the Global II ramp, or nowhere near either, we come to you. We buy across Cook County, and in Melrose Park, Franklin Park and Bensenville 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.