We buy trucks in Swayzee

Two crushed-stone operations are attached to Swayzee. Pipe Creek Jr reports 14 employees to the federal mine regulator, 3.28 miles from the middle of town; Calcium Products Co reports 10, at 3.25 miles.

Three hundredths of a mile apart in their distance to town, and their ten-mile road figures agree almost exactly — 205 structures each, twelve restrictions each, nearest at 2.01 and 2.02 miles. Elsewhere in this research figures that close have turned out to be one pit recorded twice.

Not here. These are two different names under two different operators, and the tiny differences in their circles are exactly what two genuinely adjacent but separate workings look like. A duplicate produces identical figures; a neighbour produces figures that differ in the second decimal place.

Those matching circles describe farm country with a moderate posting rate and a hard cap. Twelve of the 205 structures within ten miles are coded below legal loads — 5.9 per cent, about one crossing in seventeen — and every one of the twelve belongs to Grant County, with the nearest 2.01 miles from one pit and 2.02 from the other.

The commercial floor is 13.6 metric tonnes. Over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump that admits roughly 2.6 tonnes of stone, so a truck meeting one of those crossings is running close to empty across it. Under that floor the raw minimum drops to 9.4 tonnes, below which no commercial vehicle crosses at all.

So the count is mild and the consequence is not. That combination is common in this state and it is the reason a bare percentage tells you very little on its own.

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 Grant County road starts 6,720 lb light before it meets any posting at all. 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.

A further 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 Grant 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 Pipe Creek Jr gate, the second pit 3.25 miles out and the farm 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 has done farm work as well as quarry work.Very common round Grant County and not a problem. Seasonal use and long standing spells are ordinary on a farm truck, and neither counts against it as long as it is all there.
• 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 Grant County either way, the Pipe Creek Jr end included. 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 farm changing hands. A truck standing beside a barn since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around Grant County, and between the Pipe Creek Jr gate and the pit 3.25 miles off, 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.