We buy trucks in Columbus

Columbus carries two recorded aggregate nodes and they are not the same business. One is a crushed-limestone plant worked by US Aggregates with twelve employees; the other is a construction sand and gravel plant worked by the Nugent Sand Company with seven.

Stone and sand load differently, sell into different jobs and travel different distances, so two operations in one county is not one operation counted twice. It is two customers for two kinds of truck.

The stone plant’s coordinate lies 7.40 miles from the Columbus centroid, which is a real distance out into Bartholomew County rather than an edge-of-town pit.

That distance runs across one of the larger circles measured in this state. Within ten miles of the stone plant the Indiana bridge file records 219 structures; 13 are coded posted for load, 14 are coded below legal loads, and all fourteen of those belong to the county. The nearest is 1.34 miles away.

Fourteen in 219 is a mild rate. The consequence is not mild: the lowest operating rating in the circle is 4.5 metric tonnes, far under the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump, and the lowest rating that clears that tare is 12.0 tonnes, about 13.2 US tons — a cap admitting roughly 1.0 tonne of stone on top of the truck.

One tonne is a token load. So a route that meets the wrong crossing does not get lighter, it gets abandoned, and that is the practical meaning of a low percentage attached to a hard number.

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

Those crossings sit under a statute keyed to the road rather than to the cargo, and that is where the honest answer runs out. Indiana allows 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle and 34,000 on a tandem on a highway designated as a heavy duty highway. On a highway not so designated the ceiling is 73,280 lb, single axles 18,000, and a tandem assembly 16,000 lb for each of its axles.

The designation is made by rule and by local action. The state highway agency may adopt rules designating a highway and removing the designation, and local authorities may designate a county or city highway, road or street, or part of one. Neither publishes a consolidated list this research could find.

What the state does publish is a separate extra heavy duty route map, which is a short enumerated set in the north-west steel corridor — US 41 and US 312, plus SR 912, and US 20 and US 12 — and a different instrument for a different purpose. It says nothing about a county road out of a pit in this part of the state.

So the page states the rule and the question rather than pretending to the answer: the ceiling is 73,280 lb unless the road is designated, the designation is the county’s or the state’s to make, and it is worth asking which roads out of the gate carry it. A dense load also meets the wheel limit of 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty.

Ind. Code § 9-20-4-1 and the designation power at § 9-20-5. 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, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, farm trucks and grain hauls, 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 Bartholomew 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 stone plant 7.40 miles out, the Nugent Sand Company yard, and the crossing 1.34 miles off the gate 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 run stone and it has run sand. Does the mix matter?Not to us. A body that has carried both is a body that has worked, and wear is not damage. The Nugent Sand Company end and the stone end put the same kind of hours on a truck.
• Will you come out into the county?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to be standing at a gate 7.40 miles from town. All of Bartholomew County either way. 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. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A hauling contract ending. A truck standing beside a shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Bartholomew County, and between the town and the stone plant 7.40 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.