We buy trucks in Monon

Two crushed-stone quarries are attached to Monon, one with 8 employees 1.34 miles from the middle of town and one with 5 about 1.62 miles out, under different operators. A rail yard belonging to CSX Transportation sits 0.33 miles away, though its coordinate falls outside any incorporated place, with Monon the nearest town holding a page.

What that yard handles could not be determined from any source read, so this page does not say. The quarries are the working fact here, and what makes them unusual is not the stone.

It is the roads, and they are unusual in the opposite direction from what you might expect of a small town.

Those county roads impose almost nothing. Within ten miles of the two quarries the federal bridge inventory records 117 and 120 structures with three restrictions and two — 2.6 and 1.7 per cent — all county-maintained. White County maintains 163 bridges and posts nine of them.

The caps are the remarkable part. The tightest commercially usable crossing near either quarry is rated at 44.2 and 48.3 metric tonnes. A legal 80,000 lb truck grosses 36.3, so both of those crossings are rated for a vehicle heavier than any legal truck — there is no payload figure to publish, because the arithmetic runs past what a truck may lawfully carry in the first place. Everything nearby crosses loaded with room to spare.

Those are the highest caps recorded in roughly 1,320 sites, ahead of 42.9 tonnes at a quarry in Clark County and 39.0 at one in Virginia. For a stone hauler that is about as good as the ground gets.

So what binds a truck here is not the road at all. It is the statute.

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

That statute is keyed to which road a truck is on rather than to what it carries, which is why an unposted county road is not the same as an unrestricted one.

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. Whether these particular 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 far 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. Northern Indiana is plausible frost-law country and one county here publishes a rule requiring a daily telephone call between six and ten in the morning to run at all. Whether White County does anything similar was not established and is not asserted either way.

One more limit applies wherever the stone goes: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty, which a dense load reaches on a short deck 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, tankers, 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 White 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 quarry gates 1.34 miles and 1.62 miles out, the farms and the county roads between them are where most of it turns up.

• Do you come out to a town this size?We often don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow. We also come to you and drive it away, come to you and tow it, or take it if you drive it to us. All of White County and the towns around it, out past the yard 0.33 miles from the middle of town.
• 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 is a farm truck, not a haulage rig.We buy those too. Seasonal use and long standing spells are ordinary on a farm truck, and neither is a problem as long as it is all there.

Those answers matter out here because the reasons are ordinary and the nearest buyer is not close. 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 White County, and out past both quarry gates within 1.62 miles of the middle of town, 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.