We buy trucks in Marion

The node attached to Marion is Grain Millers, Inc., in Grant County. The company is principally known for oats, and this is not an oat mill: it is a corn facility, bought in 2010, and it is what took the business into the organic and Non-GMO corn market.

That distinction matters to a truck. A mill draws its raw material by road from the growing area around it, and the working radius on this one is put at 150 miles — grain arriving from the surrounding counties rather than from a railhead.

Grain Millers member record, North American Millers’ Association; acquisition reported by Baking Business.

So the trucks that matter here are the ones bringing crop in, and Indiana writes a rule specifically for them.

Farm commodities moving from the place of production to the first point of delivery where they are weighed may run up to 10 per cent over the gross weight limit. The same allowance covers logs, wood chips, bark and sawdust, and from 2025 it covers aggregate as well.

Two limits sit on it and both are easy to lose. The allowance is void on any weight limit imposed for a bridge or for a section of highway, so a posted crossing takes it straight back. And it is void on any part of an interstate highway. It is a rule for the county road between the field and the scale, not a general licence to run heavy.

Ind. Code § 9-20-4-2. Information, not legal advice.

Underneath that allowance sits the ordinary state ceiling, and Indiana keys it 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. A truck on an undesignated county road therefore starts 6,720 lb below the federal gross, and the ten per cent is measured from wherever that ceiling actually sits.

A separate set of exemptions runs alongside it, off the interstates: highway construction and maintenance machinery, farm drainage machinery, implements of husbandry used during farming operations, firefighting equipment, and a recovery vehicle moving a disabled vehicle or combination up to 50 miles. Local authorities may set lesser limits again, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than as one state season.

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.

Ind. Code § 9-22-3-3 and § 9-22-3. Information, not legal advice.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Farm trucks and grain hauls, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, 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 Grant County speciality — they are everywhere. They are on the list because we buy them here too.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. The roads into the Grain Millers plant and the farm ground the 150-mile draw reaches across 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 only ever ran seasonally.Common on a truck hauling into Grain Millers, and it is not a mark against it. A truck that works hard for a few weeks a year and then stands is a different machine from one that runs all year, and standing has its own costs. We read the truck rather than the hours.
• Do you actually come to Marion?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to be at the yard, and that holds right across the 150 miles the mill draws from. All of Grant 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 because the reason for the call is usually not the truck. Retiring off the farm. A medical that went the wrong way. Ground sold or rented out. A truck standing beside a bin since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Across the Grant County ground that feeds the Grain Millers plant, and out into the 150 miles the mill draws from, 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. That’s what we’re here for.