We buy trucks in Kansas City

Eight rail-yard rows are attached to this city and all eight sit inside it, with nine more filed under a neighbouring name that are also physically here. But the count is smaller than the list. The Argentine pair lie 0.79 miles apart under the same carrier with nothing between the names but the word yard; the Armourdale pair are 1.49 miles apart, same carrier, same story; the West pair are 4.05 miles apart and the same again. Three of those pairs are one facility recorded twice.

What is genuinely separate is worth knowing. The three numbered Fairfax rows are three facilities in one industrial district rather than one recorded three times, and they run under Union Pacific out east about 7 miles. The assembly plant sits with them, about 7 miles east, which puts finished vehicles on road trailers — a car-haul class of truck the rest of this city does not generate.

Around that district the work splits cleanly. The Kaw Valley operations are sand: a dry plant about 3 miles south-east with 3 people, a dredge and plant about 3.5 miles south with 6, and a second dry plant about 6 miles south-west with 18. The Bonner Springs Quarry about 7 miles south-west has 12.

The other half is grain. A Grain Craft mill sits about 8 miles south-east and a Bartlett Milling plant about 10 miles, and that is not incidental to this state: Kansas ranks first among the fifty states in flour-milling capacity. A mill town’s truck traffic is bulk in and pallets out, and it runs to a different rhythm from a quarry’s.

Those two trades are not treated the same by the state, and the mechanism is unusual: relief here is conditioned on the BODY TYPE. Under K.S.A. § 8-1908 and § 8-1909 the weight table does not apply to a truck tractor and dump semitrailer, or truck trailer, combination when it is used exclusively for hauling sand, salt for highway maintenance, gravel, slag stone, limestone or crushed stone. The stone rows here are inside that; the cement and flour work is not.

None of it reaches the interstate. Kansas states that cap on its own — 80,000 lb on any vehicle or combination on the interstate system — and 23 U.S.C. § 127 is why: a state cannot raise the federal interstate figure, so every allowance it writes is necessarily an off-interstate one.

K.S.A. §§ 8-1908 and 8-1909; 23 U.S.C. § 127. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

And whichever body the truck has, the state line is about 7 miles east and a great many trucks here are titled on the other side of it. Missouri’s rules are not this state’s. Its legal gross is 80,000 lb with a permit ceiling far above that, and under RSMo § 304.180 grain and grain coproducts may run 10 per cent over the maximum during harvest — on highways other than the interstate.

The one that catches heavy-truck sellers is the age test. Under RSMo § 301.010 a Missouri salvage vehicle is one damaged no more than six years after its model year designation, with repair cost above 80 per cent of pre-damage fair market value. A truck older than six model years cannot meet that definition however badly it was hurt. This state runs a different test again, so which side of the river the title was issued on genuinely changes the answer.

RSMo §§ 301.010 and 304.180. Information, not legal advice.

Those trades run different iron, and whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change — we buy all of them. Day cabs and road tractors off the yard district. Car haulers and rollbacks off the assembly plant work. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers out of the Kaw Valley plants and the Bonner Springs Quarry, tankers, box trucks and straight trucks on the mill runs, flatbeds, service bodies and the pickups that follow the rest of it around.

Most of it works inside about 10 miles — the Argentine and Armourdale yards, the Fairfax district, and the sand along the river.

• Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete, though — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. A missing bumper is fine. A missing driveline is not.
• My truck is titled in Missouri. Does that change anything?It changes which rules apply, not whether we buy it. The line is about 7 miles east of the middle of town and we work both sides of it every week. Tell us where the truck stands and where the title was issued, and we will start from those two facts.
• What if I can’t find the title?We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. If it’s lost, there’s a counter replacement. If there was never one to lose, there’s a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.
• There’s still money owed on it. Now what?That’s a payoff and a lien release, and it’s the slow part rather than the hard part. Tell us up front and we’ll work it into the paperwork.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever you would rather have.
• Do you actually come to Wyandotte County?Yes. 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. Everything here is inside about 10 miles — the Argentine and Armourdale yards, the Fairfax district and the Kaw Valley plants.

Beyond the trucks themselves, the reasons repeat. A DOT physical didn’t go the way it used to. A car-haul contract that filled the week for nine years went to somebody else. The truck is just sitting behind a yard, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

The lots around the Armourdale and Argentine yards, and out toward the Bonner Springs Quarry about 7 miles south-west, hold a fair number of trucks in exactly that position — and so do the ones along the river by the Kaw Valley plants, 3 miles south-east.

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.