We buy trucks in Adams

Adams carries one node in this research: the Honda Autoload ramp, a rail row worked by the Central Railroad of Indiana. Its recorded coordinate lies 0.95 miles from the middle of Adams, and it is attached here by nearest-place fallback rather than because it sits inside the town.

That same coordinate falls inside Greensburg, which is a city with a page of its own. Both things are true and neither is the whole answer, so both are kept: the ramp is recorded against Adams and it stands on Greensburg ground.

A mile out on a fallback attachment still puts it inside the working geography of Adams, whichever line you draw round the town. Trucks that serve it come off the same Decatur County roads either way.

That ramp is one of two rows at the same site. The Honda Autoload row and the Honda Plant row lie 1.16 miles apart under the same carrier, and the words that differ between them name two jobs rather than repeating one name.

A plant siding takes inbound parts and materials. An autoload ramp sends finished vehicles the other way, loading them off rail cars onto multi-car road trailers. Two facilities at one site, in other words, and not one facility recorded twice.

So the road equipment the ramp end puts on the road is car-haul tractor-trailers, which is a specific answer rather than a general one: the trucks working that gate are built to carry vehicles, and a car hauler coming off a run like that is a truck we buy.

Those trailers run under a statute that has already taken weight off them before anybody loads, because Indiana keys its allowance to the road rather than to the cargo.

Gross weight is 80,000 lb, single axles 20,000 and tandems 34,000 on the heavy-duty network the state designates. Off that network the gross falls to 73,280 lb, single axles to 18,000, and a tandem assembly is capped at 16,000 lb for each of its axles — 32,000 for the pair.

So a loaded truck on a Decatur County road gives up 6,720 lb of gross before it meets a posting at all, and which roads carry the designation was not established here. Local authorities may set lesser limits again, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than as one state season.

One more limit follows the load rather than the road: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty, which a dense load reaches on a short deck length rather than spread down a trailer.

Ind. Code § 9-20-4-1; local limits under § 9-20-1-4 and § 9-20-7-2. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is one sentence: we need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.

Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither one stops a sale.

Indiana brands a vehicle salvage where repair to a roadworthy state would cost more than 70 per cent of its fair market value immediately before the damage, and the statute names semitrailers explicitly, so a trailer can carry a brand independently of the tractor. Rebuilding requires a state police officer to verify ownership of the major component parts and the source of those parts — a paperwork audit rather than a condition inspection, and a rebuild done without receipts cannot pass it.

Ind. Code § 9-22-3-3 and § 9-22-3. Information, not legal advice.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Car haulers and the tractors that pull them, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Decatur County thing in particular — they are everywhere. They are on the list because we buy them here too.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. The Honda Autoload gate 0.95 miles out, the farms between here and Greensburg, and the county roads that feed both are where most of it turns up.

• Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Rust is not a disqualifier.
• The engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route.
• Mine is a car hauler. Do you take those?Yes. A multi-car trailer coming off the Honda Autoload end of that site is exactly the kind of equipment we look at, and so is the tractor under it. Age and hours are not the problem; missing driveline is.
• Will you come out to a place this small?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to be standing there. All of Decatur County either way, the 0.95 miles between the town and the ramp included. 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.

Those answers matter here because the reasons are ordinary and the nearest buyer is not close. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract ending. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Decatur County, and along the roads between Adams and the Honda Autoload ramp 0.95 miles off, there is usually one waiting.

Most of those aren’t happy reasons, 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.