We buy trucks in Pennville

The node attached to Pennville is Pennville Sand and Gravel, and the federal mine regulator records five employees at it. The operator on the row is St. Henry Tile Co. — a tile business working a pit, which is a more ordinary arrangement in this trade than it sounds, and it tells you the output has a destination rather than a market.

The pit lies 1.42 miles from the middle of the town, in Jay County. Five people on site does not mean five trucks: a small permanent crew and a changing set of contractor and owner-operated trucks on the road is the usual shape.

Those trucks work a circle that is comparatively kind to them. Ten miles out the Indiana bridge file returns 139 structures, of which eleven are coded below legal loads — 7.9% — and all eleven are county-maintained. The nearest is 3.07 miles from the pit, which is a good distance of clear road out of the gate.

The tightest of the eleven is rated 20.2 metric tonnes, about 22.3 US tons. Since the rating covers the gross weight of the vehicle and an empty tandem dump is around 11.0 tonnes, that crossing still admits roughly 9.2 tonnes of material over the truck itself.

There is a small mismatch inside the count worth naming. The federal inventory carries two fields: item 41 codes a structure as posted for load and finds nine here, while item 70 codes it as below legal loads and finds eleven. We report item 70, because it is the field that describes what a structure will actually carry.

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

Those crossings are not the tightest constraint on a load here. The statute is, because Indiana keys its 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 county road therefore starts 6,720 lb below the federal gross.

Farm ground brings a rule of its own alongside 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, and void on any part of an interstate. Which Jay County roads carry a heavy-duty designation was not established.

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 Jay 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 St. Henry Tile pit 1.42 miles out and the farm roads that carry its sand and gravel 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 only ever done short local runs.Typical of a five-person pit 1.42 miles from town. Short hops 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 Pennville?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to be at the pit gate. All of Jay 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.

Along the 1.42 miles between the town and the St. Henry Tile pit, and out across the Jay 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.