We buy trucks in Evansville

What the research holds for Evansville is rail. Four yard rows are attached to the city, spread from just under a mile out to about four and a half: Bids Terminal at 0.65 miles, Wansford at 2.00, Harwood at 3.80 and Howell at 4.60.

Three of the four belong to CSX Transportation. The fourth, Harwood, belongs to the Indiana Southwestern Railway, which is the smaller operator in that group and the one to know by name if you work the yards.

Two of them are not quite where the filing suggests. The Harwood coordinate lies outside any incorporated place, with Evansville simply the nearest city holding a page; Howell is attached the same way, by nearest-place fallback rather than by falling inside the city. That is a filing artefact rather than a fact about the freight, and it is the sort of thing to say out loud on a page that is otherwise counting yards.

Beyond those four rows there is a gap, and it is a real one. What any of these yards actually handles could not be determined from any source read for this research. Not one of the four — not the Southwestern Railway yard at Harwood, and not the Bids Terminal, Wansford or Howell rows under the bigger carrier either.

So this page does not say. An unknown commodity is an unknown commodity, and inventing one would be the easiest way to put something false in front of somebody selling a truck. The same applies to the coordinates themselves — a rail-yard location in this dataset is the mean of a track polyline’s vertices rather than a surveyed point, which is accurate enough to place a yard in a town and not accurate enough to place it on a street.

What that leaves is a town with four working yards under three carriers, and a body of law that decides what a truck here may legally carry. The second of those takes the rest of the page.

Those state rules are unusual in what they key the allowance to.

Indiana sets gross weight at 80,000 lb, single axles at 20,000 and tandems at 34,000 — but only on the heavy-duty network the state highway agency designates. Off that network the gross figure falls to 73,280 lb and tandems fall from 34,000 to 16,000, less than half. Most states that grant a variance grant it for what you are hauling. Indiana grants it for the road you are on.

Which roads carry the designation was not established by this research, so nothing here says whether a particular route into these yards qualifies. Local authorities may impose lesser limits again on their own roads and bridges, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than as one state season.

A separate limit catches dense freight wherever it runs: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty. And the wear reading follows from the first rule — a lower legal load means more trips for the same tonnage, so a truck that worked off the designated network carries more hours, more loading cycles and more brake applications behind the same odometer reading than one that did not.

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 — a paperwork audit rather than a condition inspection, which a rebuild done without receipts cannot pass.

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, flatbeds, sleepers, 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 Vanderburgh 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 yards at Bids Terminal and Wansford, the county roads and the runs out through 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 worked drayage in and out of the yards. Does that matter?It changes the questions. Short repeated runs in and out of Bids Terminal and the yards around it age brakes, clutch and suspension ahead of the engine, so hours tell you more than the odometer. Say what it did.
• I’m out in the county, not in town.That is fine — all of Vanderburgh County and the roads around it. 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 haul that ended when a contract did. A truck sitting behind a shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Vanderburgh County, out past the Bids Terminal yard, 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.