We buy trucks in Altona

Altona carries one node: a CSX rail yard whose recorded coordinate lies 0.19 miles from the middle of the town — inside the place, not attached to it by a fallback. A fifth of a mile from the centre of a town this size means the yard and the town are the same piece of ground.

The row is filed as Garrett Yard, and Garrett is a different DeKalb County city a few miles away. So the attachment is the accurate part and the name is the misleading part, which is worth saying plainly rather than quietly correcting.

If you have looked for this yard under the name of the wrong town, that is why.

That name is not the only gap in the row. What actually moves through Garrett Yard could not be determined from any source read for this research, and nothing here is going to guess at it.

The coordinate carries a caveat of the same kind. It is recorded as the mean of a track polyline rather than as a surveyed facility point, so 0.19 miles measures the middle of the tracks to the middle of the town, not a gate to a street corner. On a yard that runs for some distance in one direction, that is a real difference.

Which is fine for what this page is for. You do not need to know what the yard loads to know what your truck is; we work from the truck.

Those gaps do not reach the law the truck runs under, and Indiana keys its weight 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 DeKalb 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. 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 DeKalb 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. Garrett Yard 0.19 miles from the middle of town, the farm ground around it and the roads that run out to the next place 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.
• It has done farm work as well as road work.Very common round here and not a problem. Seasonal use and long standing spells are ordinary on a farm truck, and neither counts against it as long as it is all there.
• Will you come out to a town this size?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 the county either way, Garrett Yard 0.19 miles off the middle of town 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 next door. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A farm changing hands. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around this end of the county, and within the 0.19 miles between the town and Garrett Yard, 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.