We buy trucks in Francesville

Two crushed-stone rows are attached to Francesville and they sit 0.02 miles apart. At that separation they are not two pits. They are one pit recorded twice — but not, for once, because a dataset stuttered.

The two rows carry different operators and different crews: one under US Aggregates with 13 employees, one under Heidelberg Materials Midwest with 7. Both are large producers rather than a producer and a crusher owner, which makes this the less common version of a shared coordinate. Their road figures are identical to the decimal, as you would expect from two readings of the same ground.

Five times in this research two mine rows have shared one pit — at Bluefield and at Front Royal in Virginia, at Stony Creek in Virginia, at Pittsboro in North Carolina, and at two rows in Oregon. This is the fifth, and the second where both names are big.

Those identical figures describe an unusually forgiving place to run a loaded truck. The federal bridge inventory records just 84 structures within ten miles — a thin network even by rural standards — and only two are coded below legal loads, both county-maintained, the nearest 5.32 miles out.

The cap where one does bite is 24.3 metric tonnes. Over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump that admits about 13.3 tonnes of stone, which is roughly half a legal load rather than a token amount. Pulaski County posts 6 of the 72 bridges it maintains.

Two restrictions in eighty-four, both a good distance off, and half a load across them when met. Set against counties in this state where one crossing in four is posted and the cap admits less than a tonne, this is one of the mildest pieces of ground in the lane.

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

Which means the thing that actually limits a truck here is not a bridge but the statute, and Indiana’s is keyed 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 highway agency designates. Off that network gross falls to 73,280 lb and tandems fall from 34,000 to 16,000, less than half. Whether these county roads are designated is not published anywhere this research could find, so a truck loading here may be 6,720 lb below the federal gross with every bridge around it rated for more than it weighs.

Local authorities may impose lesser limits again, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than as one state season. Nothing here says Indiana has no seasonal restriction — it says it was not established, which is a different fact.

One more limit follows the stone rather than the road: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty, reached 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 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. 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 Pulaski 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 pit that Ward Stone and US Aggregates both work, the farms and the county roads 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 ran full loads most of its life.Round Pulaski County that is believable — two restricted crossings in eighty-four, and half a load across them. It usually means the driveline did the work rather than the brakes, and we ask accordingly.
• Will you come out to a town this size?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow. All of Pulaski County either way, the Ward Stone 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 out here because the reasons are ordinary and the nearest buyer is a long way off. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A farm changing hands. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Pulaski County, and at the pit Ward Stone shares, 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.