Iowa's freight is grain, materials and rail. Flour mills run at Cedar Rapids, Ames, Carlisle, Glidden and Red Oak, cement plants at Buffalo and Mason City, and liquid-bulk terminals at Des Moines, Sioux City, Burlington and Council Bluffs. Intermodal ramps work at Council Bluffs and Shell Rock, and rail yards run at Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines and Sioux City, with crushed-stone quarries spread across the state.
A Peterbilt sleeper out of Des Moines, a Freightliner day cab off a Cedar Rapids mill run, a Mack dump truck near Davenport or a Chevrolet dually out of Sioux City are handled the same way: photos and details come to us, an offer goes back, and from there we can collect it, buy it remotely, or you can drive it in.
Iowa’s trucking industry is a critical agricultural freight state with strong demand for heavy commercial vehicles across its highway network.
80,000 lb on paper, and 99 structures with opinions
Iowa Code § 321.463 sets a maximum gross weight of 80,000 lb for a vehicle or combination, subject to axle weight requirements, with penalties graduated by degree of infraction. A legal 80,000 lb truck grosses about 36.3 metric tonnes. Statewide, 4,085 of 23,716 structures are coded below legal loads — 17.2 per cent, and counties maintain 18,237 of that total, 76.9 per cent.
Iowa Code § 321.463; FHWA National Bridge Inventory, Iowa 2025 file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.
Two state rules are worth having right. The salvage threshold is repair costs above 70 per cent of fair market value before the damage, with a floor at $500 of pre-damage value — raised from 50 per cent on 1 July 2021, so an older write-up of it is out by twenty points. The ordinary route needs a salvage theft examination certificate from a specially certified peace officer; an insurer holding the title can substitute its own certification, but only where the retail cost of repairs for all damage is under $3,000.
Iowa Administrative Code 761—405.2(1), 405.4(2) and 405.7(1); Iowa Code §§ 321.52(4) and 321.69.