We buy trucks in Scottsburg

The node attached to Scottsburg is the Scott County Quarry, worked by Heidelberg Materials, with fifteen employees on the federal mine register. It is not close to town: its coordinate lies 6.69 miles from the city centroid, out in the county the pit is named for.

Ten miles from that gate the Indiana bridge file returns 162 structures. Eleven of them are coded below legal loads, all eleven county-maintained, and the nearest is 2.05 miles from the pit.

Those eleven are a small share of 162 — under seven in a hundred — and a share is the wrong number to steer by here, because of what the ratings say.

The lowest operating rating inside the circle is 2.7 metric tonnes. An empty tandem dump weighs about 11.0, so that structure carries no commercial vehicle at all, in any state of loading. The lowest crossing that will take a truck is rated 12.7 tonnes, about 14.0 US tons, and since the rating covers the vehicle’s gross weight the margin left for stone is roughly 1.7 tonnes.

With the nearest of them 2.05 miles from the gate, a route out of this pit is either clear or nearly closed, with not much in between. That is a dispatch problem rather than a driving one, and it shows up as short reroutes and part loads instead of as anything visible on the truck.

The federal inventory’s two fields disagree slightly here, item 41 finding thirteen posted and item 70 eleven below legal loads. We report item 70, because it describes what a structure will carry.

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

Those part loads start lighter than they look, because the statute has taken weight off first: 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.

Which Scott County roads carry the designation was not established, and no consolidated list of the local ones was found. Local authorities may set lesser limits again, and seasonal restrictions are administered county by county rather than as one state season.

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 Scott 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 Heidelberg Materials gate 6.69 miles out, the crossing 2.05 miles from it and the roads between the pit and the town 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 most of its life.With the usable minimum around the Heidelberg Materials gate leaving about 1.7 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 out to the pit?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to stand at a gate 6.69 miles from town. All of Scott 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 shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Across the 6.69 miles between the town and the Heidelberg Materials gate, and out on the Scott County roads either side, 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.