We buy trucks in Gary

Gary carries four industrial rows and they need counting carefully, because three of them are rail yards and only two of them are places.

Two rows sit under Canadian National 1.10 miles apart, one named Kirk and the other Kirk with a carrier token added in brackets, at 2.05 and 3.03 miles from the city centre. One name is the other plus a carrier tag, under the same operator, at a separation that is well inside a single yard’s footprint. Read on the name and the carrier rather than on the distance, that is one facility recorded twice. The third yard is genuinely separate: Curtis, operated by CSX Transportation, 2.42 miles out.

The fourth row is not rail at all — the Port of Gary, carried as a petroleum port. What any of the yards handles could not be determined from any source read, and neither could much about the port beyond its type, so this page does not extend either of them into a claim about freight.

That distinction between three rows and two yards is not pedantry, and it is the honest thing to put on a page like this one. A record that counts one Canadian National yard twice — two rows 1.10 miles apart — makes a place look busier than it is, and a page built on the count rather than on the reading inherits the error.

It also sets the limit of what this page can tell you. The coordinates behind these rows are the mean of a track polyline’s vertices rather than surveyed facility points, so they place a yard in a city and not on a street. Absence of a row proves nothing either — it means nobody found one, not that there is none.

So what is left is solid rather than large: two working yards under two carriers and a petroleum port, in a county whose industry runs continuously to the state line. The law that governs a truck across all of it takes up more of this page than the yard list does, and it should.

Those state rules key the allowance to the road rather than to the cargo, which is unusual and worth knowing.

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 are designated, and therefore which of these yards sits on the network, was not determined for any row in this batch.

Local authorities may impose lesser limits again on their own roads and bridges, and seasonal weight restrictions are county-administered rather than statewide. Nothing here says Indiana has no seasonal restriction — it says it was not established, which is a different fact.

Dense freight meets one more limit wherever it runs: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty. Steel, coke and stone reach that on a short deck length rather than spread down a trailer, so on the loads moving through this county tyre specification can decide legality rather than only 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 — 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, 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 Port of Gary, the Canadian National and CSX yards, and the roads through the Calumet 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 sat for a few years. Is it too late?No. Sitting is one of the commonest reasons people call. As long as it is all there, sitting is not the problem — tell us roughly how long and what it was doing before.
• Do you have to come and look at it?Not necessarily. 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. All of Lake County, East Chicago and Hammond included.

Those questions come up because the reasons for selling are mostly personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. Work that moved and did not come back. A truck standing on a lot since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Across Lake County the same trucks come up for the same reasons, and often enough the one being sold is standing over in East Chicago rather than here.

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.