We buy trucks in Clarksville

Clarksville carries one node, and its name is the name of the town beside it. The rail row is recorded under the Louisville and Indiana Railroad, its coordinate lies 1.96 miles from the Clarksville centroid, and it is attached here by nearest-place fallback.

That coordinate falls inside Jeffersonville, which holds a page of its own. Both facts are kept because both are true: the row is recorded against this town and the trackwork is on the next one’s ground.

At two miles apart in a built-up river county, the distinction is administrative rather than practical. A truck working that yard is working Clarksville streets on the way in and out of it.

That row is thin on traffic. What actually moves through the yard could not be determined from any source read for this research, and a page that guessed at it would be making something up about the one subject a seller could check.

The 1.96 miles carries its own caveat. Rail coordinates in this research are recorded as the mean of a track polyline rather than as a surveyed facility point, so the figure measures the middle of the trackwork to the middle of the town, not a gate to a street.

None of that changes the useful part. This is dense Clark County ground in a metropolitan ring, and the trucks in it are the mixed sort rather than one industry’s fleet.

Those gaps do not reach the law the truck runs under, because 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 Clark 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, box trucks and straight trucks, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, farm trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are on that list twice over in Clark County. They are everywhere in the country, and a built-up river county with a rail yard 1.96 miles from the middle of town is exactly where they accumulate.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. The small yards and shops round the town, the ground beside the trackwork and the rest of the county 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 been sitting behind the shop since the business changed.That is most of what we buy. Standing does not disqualify a truck; a missing driveline does. Flat tyres and a dead battery are ordinary and we plan for them.
• Do you only want the heavy stuff?No. A box truck or a service body out of a yard anywhere in Clark County is as buyable as a road tractor, and so is anything parked within the 1.96 miles between here and that trackwork. 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 in a county this built up because the reasons are ordinary. A business changing hands. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck standing behind a building since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Clark County, and within the 1.96 miles between the middle of Clarksville and the yard recorded against it, 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.