We buy trucks in New Marion

The node attached to New Marion is Jefferson Proving Ground, about five miles off at 5.1 miles from the centre of the place, in Ripley County. It ran from 1941 to 1995 across approximately 55,000 acres.

It is closed, and the record is unambiguous about it. Under the 1988 base realignment and closure round the Army’s mission there terminated in September 1995 and moved to Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The row is correctly marked as closed.

That is worth stating rather than skipping, because a large installation on a map invites an assumption about the traffic around it. Here the assumption would be thirty years out of date. What moves on these roads now is farm and country work.

U.S. Department of Defense, Army base realignment and closure record for Jefferson Proving Ground.

So the rule that earns its place on this page is not a base-traffic rule, it is the one written for crop moving off the ground.

A farm commodity travelling 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 weight limit. The same allowance covers logs, wood chips, bark and sawdust, and from 2025 aggregate as well.

Two conditions cut it back, and both are easy to forget in a loaded truck. It is void on any weight limit imposed for a bridge or for a section of highway — a posting takes the whole allowance back. And it is void on any part of an interstate highway. It is a rule for the road between the field and the scale.

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

That ten per cent is measured from a ceiling, so it is worth knowing which ceiling. Indiana’s maximums are 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle, 34,000 lb on a tandem, 50,000 lb on a tri-axle, and 800 lb per inch of tyre width.

Off the heavy-duty network the state designates, the gross figure drops to 73,280 lb and the axle figures fall with it, which puts a truck on an ordinary county road 6,720 lb below the federal gross before anything else applies.

A set of exemptions runs alongside all of 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. In country like this the husbandry and recovery limbs are the ones that come up.

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, 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. 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 Ripley 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 country roads around the old proving ground 5.1 miles out, and the farm ground across Ripley County, 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 has sat for years.Very common out here, and sitting is its own kind of wear rather than a disqualification. What matters is whether it is all there. We read the truck rather than the hours.
• Do you actually come out to New Marion?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, and on ground this far out that is usually the realistic path rather than the fallback. Nobody has to be standing beside the old Jefferson Proving Ground boundary 5.1 miles out. All of Ripley 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 barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Across the 5.1 miles between the place and the old proving ground boundary, and out on the Ripley County roads, 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.