We buy trucks in Muncie

Two rows sit against Muncie and they are the two halves of a working town. A crushed-stone operation with 13 employees is 4.22 miles from the middle of it, and a Norfolk Southern rail yard sits 1.84 miles out, genuinely inside the city rather than attached by fallback.

What that yard handles could not be determined from any source read, so this page does not say. The stone is where the measured detail is.

And the measurement here is a comfortable one by the standards of this lane, which is worth knowing before anybody assumes a Delaware County truck has had a hard life.

That comfort is in the counts. Within ten miles of the aggregate plant the federal bridge inventory records 199 structures with eight coded below legal loads — about one crossing in twenty-five — all eight county-maintained, and the nearest 4.30 miles out rather than at the gate.

The cap where one bites is 19.0 metric tonnes. Over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump that admits roughly 8.0 tonnes of stone, which is a substantial part load rather than a token one. Below the commercial floor the raw minimum falls to 10.2 tonnes, under which no commercial vehicle crosses at all.

Four per cent restricted, none of it at the gate, and a third of a load across the tightest of them. Set against counties in this state where one road in four is posted, Delaware County is easy ground.

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

Which means the binding constraint here is more likely the statute than any bridge, and Indiana’s is keyed 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 from 34,000 to 16,000, less than half. Which roads are designated was not established here, so a truck loading at that plant may be 6,720 lb below the federal gross with nothing at the roadside saying so.

Local authorities may impose lesser limits again on their own roads and bridges, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than as one state season.

One more limit follows the stone 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 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, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, 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 Delaware 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 aggregate plant 4.22 miles out, the Norfolk Southern yard inside the city and the county roads around 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 ran full loads most of its life.Believable round Delaware County — eight restrictions in 199 crossings and none of them at the gate. It usually means the driveline did the work rather than the brakes, and we ask accordingly.
• How far out do you come?All of Delaware County and the towns around it, out past the Norfolk Southern yard. 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 contract that ended. A truck standing behind a shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Delaware County, and out past the Norfolk Southern yard, 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.