We buy trucks in Portland

Two crushed-stone rows are attached to Portland and they sit at the same coordinate. One reports 24 employees, the other 10, and their ten-mile road figures are identical to the decimal — which is what two readings of one piece of ground look like.

But this pair is not the usual kind. The smaller row is coded as an underground operation and its operator is a mine-development and shaft-sinking contractor rather than an aggregate producer. A contractor working at an operating quarry registers separately with the federal mine regulator, which is why the row exists at all and why its ten-mile figures are simply the quarry’s.

Seven times in this research two mine rows have shared one pit — at Bluefield and at Front Royal in Virginia among them. This is the first where one of the two is a contractor’s registration rather than a producer’s. What the contractor was actually doing there is not recorded, and nothing here infers it.

Those shared figures describe a middling network with a hard edge. The federal bridge inventory records 162 structures within ten miles with eleven coded below legal loads — 6.8 per cent, about one crossing in fifteen — every one of them county-maintained, and the nearest 2.95 miles out.

The cap is what bites. The lowest crossing a commercial vehicle can legally use is rated at 11.9 metric tonnes, and an empty tandem dump already weighs about 11.0. That leaves room for roughly 0.9 tonnes of stone, which is a shovelful rather than a load. Where a restriction appears here, it effectively closes the road to a working truck.

So the shape of the problem is unusual: not many postings, but the ones there are do not take a part load either. That is a routing decision made before loading rather than a compromise made afterwards.

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

Those crossings sit under a statute that has already taken weight off the truck, 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 highway agency designates. Off that network gross falls to 73,280 lb and tandems fall from 34,000 to 16,000, less than half. So a loaded truck on a Jay County road starts 6,720 lb light before it reaches a posting that will not take it anyway. Which roads are designated was not established here.

Local authorities may impose lesser limits again, 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, reached 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, 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 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 Jay County pit 2.48 miles from town, the farms and the county 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.
• I contract at the pit rather than work for it.Common enough that the federal register has a separate row for exactly that arrangement at this Jay County site. It makes no difference to us — we buy from whoever is on the title.
• Will you come out to a town this size?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow. All of Jay County either way, out past the pit 2.48 miles from town. 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 out here because the reasons are ordinary and the nearest buyer is a long way off. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract at the pit that ended. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Jay County, and out at the pit 2.48 miles from town, 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.