We buy trucks in East Chicago

The industrial record here is unusually specific about what it is. Two lime plants sit inside the Indiana Harbor steel complex, and the second is named for the mill it serves. A limekiln inside a steelworks is not a coincidence of geography — lime is the flux that carries impurities out of molten steel, so the kiln is there to feed the furnaces beside it.

The name on the row is three ownerships out of date. Inland Steel became Ispat Inland in 1998, then Mittal, then ArcelorMittal, then Cleveland-Cliffs in 2020, which operates Indiana Harbor now. That matters less for a truck than the fact underneath it: Indiana Harbor is a lake port, and the limestone feeding Great Lakes steel arrives by vessel from Michigan and Ontario quarries rather than by road from a local pit.

The third plant row is not a mineral plant at all. It is the bp refinery at Whiting, carried in the source layer under a mineral type because of its sulphur, with capacity to process around 440,000 barrels of crude a day — the largest refinery bp owns. Of the mistyped refinery rows on file it is the only one whose operator name is still current.

Those plants are served by rail as well as water, and the two yard rows attached to East Chicago both need a caveat. The Lake Front yard belongs to the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad and its recorded coordinate is 1.09 miles from the city centre — but that coordinate actually falls inside Gary, which holds a page of its own.

The other is crossed the other way. A Canadian National yard recorded 1.35 miles out is named Whiting, while Whiting is a separate city with its own page and two rail-yard rows of its own. The name and the filing point at different places.

Neither correction changes what a truck does, and this page is not going to pretend it knows more than it does: what either yard actually handles could not be determined from any source read. Three of the Indiana Calumet yard rows are attached to a municipality other than the one containing their coordinate, alongside fourteen more on the Illinois side of the same metropolitan area. In a district this tightly packed, the city line is not where the work stops.

Neither the mills nor the yards change the rule that governs the road out of them, and it is keyed to the road rather than 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 carry the designation was not established here, so nothing on this page says which side of the line a particular route falls.

Local authorities may impose lesser limits of their own on any road or bridge, and in a district of this age that is a question to ask rather than assume. Seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than statewide.

A separate limit bites hardest on exactly the freight moving here: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty. Steel, slag, coke and stone all arrive on a short deck length rather than spread down a trailer, so tyre specification can decide legality on a mill run and not merely wear.

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 — an audit of the parts trail rather than of the finished repair.

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, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, tankers, flatbeds, rollbacks, car haulers, 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 Lake 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 mill gates, the Great Lakes freight that comes off the water and the Calumet runs 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 ran mill work. Does that put you off?No. It tells us what to ask about — heat, salt, brake and suspension life, and hours rather than miles on a truck that spent its day inside a plant.
• I’m in Hammond, Whiting or Gary. Same thing?Yes, and the city line matters even less than the filings do. All of Lake County, the Lake Front yard end of it 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 mill contract that ended and did not come back. A truck standing at the back of a lot since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Lake County, and the Great Lakes freight that comes off the water, the same trucks come up for sale for the same reasons.

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.