We buy trucks in English

The node attached to English is Temple Quarry, worked by Mulzer Crushed Stone, and the federal mine regulator records fifteen employees at it. Its coordinate lies 2.89 miles from the middle of the town, in the limestone hills of the southern part of the state.

Fifteen people is a working plant with a steady output. What it does not have is a steady road out.

This is the most restricted piece of network measured anywhere in this research, and the figures behind that are worth setting out plainly rather than summarising.

Those figures start with the county. Crawford County posts 41 of the 78 bridges it maintains — 52.6%, the highest county rate on file — and it shows completely at the gate.

Within ten miles of the pit the Indiana bridge file records 124 structures. Forty are coded below legal loads, 32.3%, and every one of the forty is county-maintained. The nearest is 0.63 miles from the pit, which is closer than most trucks get to the highway before the first decision.

Then the cap. The commercial floor here is exactly 11.0 metric tonnes, which is the tare of an empty tandem dump — so that crossing admits the truck and none of its load. Not a part load. Nothing.

Sixteen miles away, the same operator’s Cape Sandy pit meets a network 29.8% restricted whose tightest crossing admits 1.6 tonnes. Twenty-five miles south-east, in Harrison County, a plant of the same rock is 3.8% restricted with the nearest crossing eight miles out and 10.7 tonnes over the tightest. Same limestone, same hills, thirty times the restriction. What differs is what the counties have done with their networks, not the geology under them.

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

On top of all that sits a statute that takes weight off before any bridge does, because 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 Crawford 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, farm trucks and grain hauls, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, 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 Crawford 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 Temple Quarry gate 2.89 miles out, the crossing 0.63 miles from it and the hill roads that thread between them 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 part loaded its whole life. Does that hurt it?No, and round here it is the only way to work. A truck on a network where the tightest crossing takes nothing has done far more trips for the same tonnage, so its hours and brake cycles run ahead of its miles. That is history, not damage.
• Will you come out into the hills?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to be standing at the Temple Quarry gate 2.89 miles from town. All of Crawford 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 more than most places, because a network like this one is hard on an operator as well as on a truck. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A hauling contract ending. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Crawford County, and between the town and the Temple Quarry gate 2.89 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.