We buy trucks in Bainbridge

The quarry attached to Bainbridge sits 2.06 miles from the town centroid, and the federal mine regulator records six employees at it. Six is a crew: the stone is worked here, and the haulage away from it belongs to somebody else.

That is the shape of most of the workings in this part of Putnam County. A small permanent crew on the plant, and a changing set of contractor and owner-operated trucks on the road between the pit and wherever the stone is going.

Those trucks are the ones this page is about, and the road they use is the thing that decides how they are loaded.

That road is a county road, and so is every restriction on it. Within ten miles of the pit the Indiana bridge file records 174 structures; 48 are coded posted for load, 50 are coded below legal loads, and all fifty of those are county-maintained. The nearest is 0.93 miles from the gate.

One crossing in four restricted is a heavy rate. The lowest operating rating in the circle is 2.7 metric tonnes, well under the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump, and the lowest rating that clears that tare is 13.6 tonnes, about 15.0 US tons — a cap that admits roughly 2.6 tonnes of stone on top of the truck.

The pit twelve miles south of here measures almost the same: 46 of its 181 structures restricted, 45 of them the county’s. Putnam County maintains 221 bridges and posts 78 of them, 35.3 per cent, so this is not one unlucky circle but the shape of the whole county network.

The consolation is administrative. One authority owns every restriction in the circle, which means a permit conversation or a route question reaches all of them at once instead of half of them.

FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Indiana file, items 41, 64 and 70.

Those crossings sit under a statute that has already taken weight off the truck, 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 Putnam 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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, day cabs and road tractors, 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 Putnam 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 quarry gate 2.06 miles out, the crossing 0.93 miles from it and the farm roads that link them 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 more trips than miles, if that makes sense.It makes complete sense here. A capped network means more loads for the same tonnage, so the hours, the loading cycles and the brakes are ahead of the odometer. We read the truck rather than the dash.
• 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 at the gate. All of Putnam County either way, the pit 2.06 miles out 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 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 Putnam County, and between the town and the quarry gate 2.06 miles out, 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.