We buy trucks in Mitchell

Mitchell carries a cement plant with 120 employees under Heidelberg Materials, a crushed-stone quarry with 24, a clay-mine row on the plant coordinate, and a rail yard belonging to CSX Transportation about a mile out — though that yard’s coordinate falls outside any incorporated place, with Mitchell simply the nearest town holding a page.

Around all of that sits the other half of the county. Lawrence County also holds six dimension-stone workings, so two entirely unrelated fleets run the same roads: open flatbeds carrying cut limestone block, and sealed pneumatic tankers carrying cement powder. They have different trailers, different loading, different wear and almost nothing in common except the tarmac.

One detail in the record is honestly ambiguous and is left that way. This plant is filed as a surface operation while the other Indiana cement works are filed as facilities, which most likely means the row is recorded against the associated limestone quarry rather than the kiln — but that was not established, so it is not asserted. It leaves the federal training-part question genuinely open here rather than merely unresearched.

Those two fleets meet the same roads, and around the quarry there are not many of them. The federal bridge inventory records only 77 structures within ten miles — a thin network by the standards of this state — and thirteen of them are coded below legal loads, every one county-maintained.

That is about one crossing in six, with the nearest 3.68 miles out and a commercial floor of 13.6 metric tonnes, admitting roughly 2.6 tonnes of stone over an empty tandem’s tare. On a block load, where the deck is chosen for the dimensions of the stone rather than for tonnage, a restriction like that is a routing decision made before the truck is loaded rather than after.

Mitchell sits 30.0 miles from Bloomington, so the mill leg out of here is a county-road run before it is anything else.

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

Those county roads are exactly where the statute bites hardest, 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 highway agency designates. Off that network gross falls to 73,280 lb and tandems fall to 16,000. So a truck on an undesignated county road starts 6,720 lb below the federal gross, and then meets a posted bridge on one crossing in six. Which roads are designated is not published anywhere this research could find.

Local authorities may set lower limits again, and seasonal restrictions are county-administered. Whether the southern limestone counties impose frost restrictions at all was not established and is not asserted either way.

The wheel limit is the one that catches both fleets: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty. Cut block and cement powder are both dense, and both arrive on a short deck length rather than spread out, so 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. Flatbeds and lowboys, pneumatic bulk tankers, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, 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 Lawrence 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 Heidelberg Materials kiln, the quarry gates and the mill roads towards Bloomington 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 hauled block on a heavy deck. Does that hurt it?No, but it changes what we ask. Block work is hard on suspension, tyres and the deck itself rather than on mileage, so tell us the hours and what it carried.
• Do you cover the rest of Lawrence County?Yes, all of it, and the 30.0 miles up to Bloomington as well. 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 mill or a plant contract that ended. A truck standing beside a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Lawrence County, between the Heidelberg Materials kiln and the stone mills, there is usually one standing somewhere.

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.