A mine that is not a metal mine
Filed under metal ore, and the code is a residual
The Tamms Plant, operated by Covia Specialty Minerals, records 15 employees and has been active on the federal mine register since 27 June 1973. Its commodity is recorded as Misc. Metal Ore NEC, and that code is worth a sentence because it is misleading on its face.
“NEC” means not elsewhere classified — a residual bucket for anything the schedule has no better slot for. Every time that code has come up in this research it has turned out to be a non-metal. So the honest reading is a minerals plant filed under a leftover heading, not a metal mine, and we are not going to describe it as one.
Sources: MSHA mine records and the city-pages node list, checked 2026-08-23.
Where barge meets road
That plant sits close to water, and this far south that is the fact that shapes the haulage. The river port is 4.49 miles south-west, and the two Cairo rail yards are 15.23 and 17.08 miles south, down at the confluence. Alexander County records four rows in total — this plant, those two yards and the port.
North it is stone: Anna Quarries 9.54 miles and the Shawnee Stone Jonesboro plant 9.55 miles, both in Union County, and the Cypress Plant 15.17 miles north-east. The Amrize Joppa cement plant is 21.97 miles east.
A short road leg to a barge is a different job from a long delivery. Many turns, heavy loads, low mileage, and a lot of low-speed manoeuvring on and off unpaved ground. A truck from here can read young on the odometer and be thoroughly used, and the hour meter is the number to ask about.
Bulk work into a barge is all turns and no miles. Read the box, the hoist and the hour meter rather than the odometer.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change
So bulk haulers and dump trucks are the local shape, with Covia Specialty Minerals here, the river port 4.49 miles south-west and Anna Quarries 9.54 miles north. That is a fact about Alexander County, not a preference of ours. We buy all of them.
Day cabs, flatbeds, box trucks, work trucks and pickups are used everywhere and are just as welcome, 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 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?Yes, and this far down the state that matters. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us. The Tamms Plant, the Cairo yards 15.23 miles south, or anywhere else in Alexander County — the remote route is a real option here rather than a fallback. We buy across Cairo, Anna and Mill Creek as well.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup. That is the whole of it.