We buy trucks in Schererville

Schererville carries two freight rows rather than one, and they generate different kinds of truck work.

The first is a rail yard operated by Canadian National, recorded 2.06 miles from the town centroid. The second is a liquid bulk terminal, 1.76 miles out, in Lake County — a transfer point where product moves between bulk transport and tank trucks. Its operator and address are not recorded, and it has not been researched in the detail the rail row has, so this page names it and does not embroider it.

A tank-truck terminal is worth naming even so, because it puts a specific kind of equipment on the local roads: tankers, and the tractors that pull them, working a delivery radius out from the transfer point rather than a line haul.

That rail row needs one qualification before anyone drives out to it. Its coordinate falls inside Griffith town, which holds a page of its own, while the row itself is attached to this town.

Neither filing is wrong — the coordinate is the mean of a track polyline rather than a surveyed gate, as all 2,459 rail rows in this research are, and a yard sitting between two towns will land on one side of a line while serving both. What moves through it could not be determined from any source read for this research, and the 75 miles credited to the row is a slice-wide constant flagged as estimated rather than a measurement.

The practical version: there is rail freight work 2.06 miles from here, some of it addressed to the next town, and we buy on both sides of that line.

Those two operations run under one weight rule, and Indiana keys it 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.

This corner of the state is the one place the designation question has a published partial answer. The department publishes an extra heavy duty route map naming a short enumerated set — US 41 and US 312, plus SR 912, and US 20 and US 12 — which runs through the north-west industrial belt. It is a different instrument for a different purpose, and it does not tell you whether a given Lake County street out to a terminal carries the heavy-duty designation under the weight rule. That was not established.

One more limit follows the load rather than the road: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty. On a tank load that is a real constraint, because liquid weight arrives on a short wheelbase 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. Day cabs and road tractors, tankers, flatbeds and dump trucks, aggregate haulers, rollbacks, service bodies, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Tankers get a specific mention here because of the liquid bulk terminal 1.76 miles out, and box trucks and straight trucks because they are everywhere. Both are on the list for the same reason: we buy them.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. The terminal, the Canadian National trackwork 2.06 miles out and the Lake 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.
• It is a tanker and the tank is worn out.The tank and the truck are different questions. What we need is the truck complete — engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels. Around a liquid bulk terminal 1.76 miles from here that is a common enough situation.
• Do you actually come to Schererville?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow. All of Lake County either way, including the ground round the Canadian National yard 2.06 miles out that is filed to the next town over. 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 shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Between the liquid bulk terminal 1.76 miles out, the Canadian National trackwork and the Lake County roads that join them, 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.