We buy trucks in Mooresville

Mooresville carries two entries on our node list rather than one. The Mooresville Shale Pit is a clay and shale working operated by General Shale, the North American arm of the Austrian company Wienerberger, listed at 148 E Sycamore Ln. Yard 72 — Waverly is a construction sand and gravel operation run by VCNA Prairie, with six employees on the federal mine register, in Morgan County.

Only the first of the two has been researched in detail so far, so this page states what is on the rows and does not guess at the rest. Two workings, two commodities, and — as it turns out — two completely different haul patterns.

That difference is the thing worth knowing if you drive for either of them, because it decides what kind of truck the work wears out.

Construction sand and gravel is low value for its weight, and freight overtakes the product quickly: the usual working haul is put at 25 to 50 miles, and the radius carried on the Waverly row is 35. Short runs, many of them, loaded one way.

Processed clay and shale is the other case. The finished product carries enough value per ton to travel, and the radius on that row is 150 miles. But that figure describes the finished product leaving, not the raw material arriving — the haul from pit to kiln is often measured in yards. One address can therefore put both a long-distance flatbed run and a lifetime of hundred-yard shuttles on the same site.

The shale pit sits 3.06 miles from the middle of Mooresville, and our two sources disagree about which county line it falls on: the row records Morgan, while the coordinate reverse-geocodes to Hendricks. We have not resolved that, and it does not need resolving to sell a truck — we work both sides of it.

Node rows from the U.S. Geological Survey active mines and mineral plants layer and the MSHA mine dataset; operator identification from company listings rather than from the rows themselves.

Both of those hauls run into the same 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 — 32,000 for the pair. A truck on an undesignated county road starts 6,720 lb below the federal gross before it meets a posted crossing.

There is an allowance that reaches the aggregate side of this. A farm commodity moving from the place of production to the first point of delivery where it is weighed may run up to 10 per cent over the gross limit, and since 2025 aggregate is covered by the same provision. It is void on any limit imposed for a bridge or a section of highway, and void on any part of an interstate, so it is a county-road rule and nothing more.

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 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 road rules there is a permitting question, and for this commodity it has a clear answer. Clay and shale are named in the remit of the Indiana Division of Reclamation, so a working of this kind sits under the state permit authority for non-coal mining rather than outside it.

Not every mineral row in this state does. Several — peat, perlite, olivine, aluminium — fall outside that remit. So the General Shale working 3.06 miles from town carries a reclamation obligation that a neighbouring pit on a different commodity would not. It is a small point of fact about the site rather than about your truck, but it is a real difference between two holes in the ground.

Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Reclamation — non-coal mining jurisdictional scope.

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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, 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 Morgan 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 shale pit 3.06 miles out, the Waverly sand and gravel yard and the roads between them 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 never ran long distance.On a 35-mile aggregate haul that is the work, not a shortcoming. Short runs and a lot of them put hours and brake cycles ahead of the miles, and we read the truck rather than the dash.
• Do you actually come to Mooresville?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to stand at a pit 3.06 miles out of town. All of Morgan County either way, and over the Hendricks line with it. 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. 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.

Between the shale pit 3.06 miles out, the Waverly yard and the Morgan County roads that join them, 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.