We buy trucks in Crawfordsville

Crawfordsville carries two recorded plant nodes and both are filed under the town’s own name, which makes them easy to mistake for one. They are not. One is a construction sand and gravel operation worked by US Aggregates with ten employees; the other is a perlite plant, 1.85 miles from the centroid, run by Dicaperl Minerals of the Dicalite Management Group.

Nothing is mined at the perlite plant. The ore is shipped in, and the site processes and heats it for expansion — filter aids, industrial fillers for food-grade filtration, and horticultural perlite go out.

So one plant digs its material out of the ground here and the other has its material brought to it. That difference decides how each one loads a truck.

That is the useful distinction on this page. Expanding perlite multiplies its volume roughly fifteen times, which is why ore is expanded near the customer rather than at the mine — nobody ships air.

A trailer out of the Dicaperl Minerals plant therefore fills before it gets heavy. It cubes out rather than weighing out, so the axle and tri-axle limits rarely bind on the outbound load and the wheel-weight rule of 800 lb per inch of tire width never does. The inbound ore haul is the leg where weight matters at all.

Sand and gravel is the opposite case and always has been: it weighs out long before it fills. Two plants in one town, one loading light and bulky and one loading dense, and the trucks that serve them wear in different places.

Both of them still run under one statute, and 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 Montgomery 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, day cabs and road tractors, box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, farm trucks and grain hauls, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Montgomery 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 Dicaperl Minerals plant 1.85 miles from the centroid, the sand and gravel yard, and the roads that serve both 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 never ran heavy. Does that count against it?No. A trailer that cubed out its whole life has an easier time of it than one that weighed out, and that is a point in the truck’s favour rather than against it. The line is the same as everywhere: is it complete.
• Will you come out to the plants?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 1.85 miles out. All of Montgomery County either way, the Dicaperl Minerals 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 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 Montgomery County, and between the town and the Dicaperl Minerals plant 1.85 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.