Named for the next town over
The yard here carries a neighbour’s name
The rail yard recorded here resolves 0.4 miles from the town centre and inside the place — about as tight as a rail row gets in this dataset. It is named for Benton, the neighbouring town, which has a city page of its own. So the name on the row and the town it actually sits in are two different places, and we would rather say that than let the name imply a location it does not support.
Franklin County records four rows: this yard, a second yard 5.86 miles south, a coal mine and a coal prep plant. One row reports a headcount and it records 158 people — the MC#1 Mine, 10.41 miles east.
Sources: MSHA mine records and the city-pages node list, checked 2026-08-23.
Coal in every direction, and most of it just outside the county
Those four rows undersell the ground, because the working faces are mostly across the line. The Pond Creek-Mach prep plant is 9.81 miles south in Williamson County, the Sugar Camp prep plant 10.10 miles east, the M-Class MC#1 Mine 10.41 miles east and the Mach #1 Mine 12.24 miles south-east. Further out: the BCR Mine 20.95 miles west, two Hamilton County Coal operations 21.62 and 22.59 miles north-east.
Eight coal sites inside twenty-three miles is a working coalfield, and the truck trade that goes with it is specific. Coal is abrasive and it is loaded in bulk at a face and tipped at a plant, so the box floor, the tailgate and the hoist take the wear while the road miles stay modest. A coal hauler can read young on the odometer and be thoroughly used.
The two yards in this county are where that material meets rail, which is why a small town carries one at all.
On a coal hauler read the box floor, the tailgate and the hoist first. The odometer is the least useful number on the truck.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change
So coal haulers and heavy tippers are the local shape, with the M-Class MC#1 Mine 10.41 miles east recording 158 people and the Sugar Camp plant 10.10 miles east. That is a fact about Franklin 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. Here, 10.41 miles east at the MC#1 Mine, or anywhere else in Franklin County — 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. We buy across Benton, West Frankfort and Thompsonville as well.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup. That is the whole of it.