We buy trucks in New Point

The node attached to New Point is the New Point Quarry, worked by the New Point Stone Company, and the federal mine regulator records twelve employees at it. Its coordinate lies 0.86 miles from the middle of the town, which puts the gate and the village on the same short stretch of road.

Ten miles out the Indiana bridge file returns 169 structures. That is a dense circle, the sort of count that comes with flat Decatur County farm ground and a watercourse every mile or two.

Of those 169 structures, fifteen are coded below legal loads — 8.9%, a low proportion — and all fifteen are county-maintained. The nearest is 2.44 miles from the gate.

A low share is not the same as a loose network, though, and the ratings say so. The lowest operating rating among the fifteen is 9.1 metric tonnes, which is under the roughly 11.0 tonnes an empty tandem dump weighs: that crossing takes no commercial vehicle at all, loaded or not.

The lowest that will take one is rated 11.7 tonnes, about 12.9 US tons. Because the rating covers the gross weight of the vehicle, the margin left for stone once the empty truck is subtracted is about 0.7 tonnes — seven hundred kilos, on a truck built to carry twenty times that.

So the useful reading here is not the 8.9%. It is that a quarry with a dense, mostly unposted network around it still has crossings that will not take a working load at all.

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

Those crossings are the second cut at the load. The first is the statute, because Indiana keys its weight 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 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 Decatur County road gives up 6,720 lb of gross before it meets a posting.

Farm ground brings a rule of its own with it: 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 falls under the same provision. It is void on any limit imposed for a bridge, so a posted crossing cancels it.

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 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 Decatur 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 New Point Stone gate 0.86 miles out, the village road it opens onto and the farm ground past it 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 run part loaded for years.With the tightest usable crossing leaving about 0.7 tonnes over the empty truck, that is the job rather than a fault. More trips for the same tonnage puts hours and brake cycles ahead of the miles, and we read the truck rather than the dash.
• Do you actually come to New Point?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to stand at the New Point Stone gate 0.86 miles from the middle of town. All of Decatur 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. A medical that went the wrong way. A hauling contract ending. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Within the 0.86 miles between the village and the New Point Stone gate, and out across the Decatur County farm 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.