We buy trucks in Shoals

The node attached to Shoals is a National Gypsum mine and plant, 2.22 miles from the town centroid, in Martin County. The row reads Mine/Plant as one entry, and that is not a filing shortcut: in the wallboard trade the mine and the board plant are normally the same site, because gypsum rock is not worth hauling far before it is turned into board.

So the truck work here starts at the finished-product end rather than at the pit. What leaves is board on flatbeds, and what stays inside the fence is the rock.

That single site is not the whole of it either. Martin County holds workings belonging to two competing national wallboard manufacturers — an unusual concentration for a county this size, and it doubles the amount of board traffic on the same set of roads.

The filing around them is worth knowing if you are trying to match a page to a place. Both rows are named for this town, but the node list files one under Huron and the other here. They are separate operations under separate companies; the shared name is geography, not ownership.

For distance, the two markets those plants ship into are close: Bloomington is 35 to 36 miles away and Louisville 59 to 61. That is a short-haul flatbed trade rather than a long-distance one.

Those runs are short but they are not light, and 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 county road therefore starts 6,720 lb below the federal gross.

On a haul of 35 miles to Bloomington the difference between the designated and undesignated ceiling is the difference between one load and one and a bit, repeated every day. Which Martin County roads carry the designation was not established, and no consolidated list of local designations was found. Local authorities may set lesser limits again.

One more limit follows the load rather than the road: 800 lb per inch of tire width, loaded or empty, which stacked board 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. Flatbeds and day cabs, road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, farm trucks and grain hauls, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Flatbeds lead the list here because board travels on them, and box trucks and straight trucks are on it because they are everywhere and we buy them too.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. The National Gypsum gate 2.22 miles out, the roads towards Bloomington 35 miles off and the Martin County ground between 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 done the same short run for fifteen years.Ordinary on board work. A 35-mile leg to Bloomington and back, repeated, puts loading cycles and hours ahead of the odometer, and a low reading on the dash tells you very little about the machine. We read the truck rather than the dash.
• Do you actually come to Shoals?Often we don’t need to — plenty of these we buy remotely and arrange the tow, so nobody has to stand at a gate 2.22 miles from town. All of Martin 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, and with two manufacturers working one county that can happen without much warning. A truck standing beside a shop, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Across the 2.22 miles between the town and the National Gypsum gate, and out on the Martin County roads towards Bloomington, 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.