We buy trucks in Bedford

Two dimension-stone workings are attached to Bedford, and the striking thing about them is their size. Earthworks Quarry Site #7 reports 5 employees to the federal mine regulator. Tanyard Quarry, under Legacy Limestone, reports one.

Both cut the Salem Limestone belt of Lawrence and Monroe counties — the stone sold as Indiana limestone or, after this town, as Bedford limestone, and used on a large share of American monumental architecture. Blocks come out in large regular shapes for milling, so what a trailer has to accommodate is block dimension rather than weight alone.

A one-person quarry, though, is very unlikely to run a highway fleet of its own. So the truck connection at a node this size does not run through the operation at all — it runs through the district. Whoever hauls this stone is a contractor working the whole belt, and that is who this page is for.

That reading changes what the rest of the record means. The milling happens locally: Monroe County, up the road, publishes a heritage record of the district’s mills and quarries, so the quarry-to-mill leg stays inside the district rather than leaving raw for finishing elsewhere. Short, heavy, awkward loads on local roads before anything reaches a highway.

Beyond the mill, one published figure gives the shape of the outbound move: about 30 per cent of the limestone from the belt’s largest operator’s four Indiana quarries is sold outside the Midwest, so roughly seven-tenths stays regional. That is a regional flatbed market rather than long haul or export. The figure was published in 2019 and it is dated; it is the only one on file.

Two operator names in the record are one operator, which is worth knowing if you are matching paperwork: the strings for Indiana Limestone Company appear in two spellings, and the firm has been a legacy brand under Polycor since a merger in October 2018. Legacy Limestone at Tanyard Quarry is a different and much smaller business.

Those local legs run under a statute keyed to the road rather than to the cargo.

Indiana sets gross weight at 80,000 lb, single axles at 20,000 and tandems at 34,000 — on the heavy-duty network the state highway agency designates. Off that network gross falls to 73,280 lb and tandems fall from 34,000 to 16,000. Which roads are designated was not established here, so nothing on this page says whether a particular mill road qualifies.

A second limit matters more to cut stone than to most freight: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty. A block is dense and sits on a short length of deck rather than spread down a trailer, so on a deck chosen for dimension that limit can decide legality rather than merely wear.

Local authorities may impose lesser limits again, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county. Whether the southern limestone counties impose frost restrictions at all was not established and is not asserted either way.

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 that one sentence.

Everything after it is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither 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 used and the source of those parts — a paperwork audit rather than a condition inspection, which a rebuild done without receipts cannot pass.

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

None of that narrows what we will look at. Flatbeds and lowboys, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, day cabs and road tractors, 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 Lawrence 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. We buy all of them. The Salem Limestone belt, the mill roads and the contractors running between Tanyard Quarry and the rest of the district 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.
• I contract to the quarries rather than work for one.That is the normal arrangement round the Salem Limestone belt, and it makes no difference to us. We buy from the person whose name is on the title.
• Do you come out to the belt towns?Often we don’t need to — a lot of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow. All of Lawrence County either way, Tanyard Quarry end 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 questions come up because the reasons for selling are mostly personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A haulage contract that ended when a mill’s order book did. A truck standing at the edge of a yard since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Lawrence County, and among the contractors working the Salem Limestone belt, 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.