We buy trucks in Huron

The node attached to Huron is a gypsum Shoals Mine and Plant, 3.71 miles from the middle of the place. It is not the only one: two competing national wallboard manufacturers hold mines and plants inside this one small county, and both rows are named for Shoals while the list files one of them here and the other under that town.

So the name on the row points at a neighbour rather than at this place, which is worth saying plainly instead of quietly correcting.

Two national manufacturers in a rural county of this size is unusual, and it means the freight leaving Martin County is heavier and more regular than the population would suggest.

Both of those rows read Mine and Plant together, and that is not a filing shortcut. In the wallboard industry the mine and the board plant are normally the same site, because moving raw gypsum any distance makes no sense when the board is what has value.

Which means almost nothing arrives and a great deal leaves. Finished board goes out on flat decks, strapped and sheeted, to builders’ merchants and sites: Bloomington is 35 to 36 miles from the Shoals Mine and Louisville 59 to 61 miles, so a day’s work out of here is a real round trip rather than a shuttle.

That puts a particular truck on these roads — flatbeds and the tractors that pull them, running loaded out and empty back, day in and day out.

Those loads run under a statute that has already taken weight off them, 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 Martin 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. Flatbeds and day cabs, road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, 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 Martin 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 Shoals Mine gate 3.71 miles out, the roads north towards Bloomington and the county roads between 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.
• The deck is marked up from strapping board.That is ordinary wear on a flatbed out of Martin County and it is not damage. Strap marks and a scarred deck are what a working trailer looks like. The line is whether the truck is complete.
• Will you come out to a place this small?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to be standing at a gate 3.71 miles out. All of the county either way, the Shoals Mine 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 hauling contract ending. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Martin County, and on the 3.71 miles between here and the Shoals Mine gate, 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.