Pendleton County
A lime plant, and the mine that answers to the same name
The row attached here is a lime plant, 3.67 miles from the centroid. It is one of two lime plants this research found on the Ohio River side of northern Kentucky, both under the same company.
Elsewhere in this county there is an underground operation carrying the same Black River name and 163 people on the federal record — the largest crushed-stone headcount in this body of research. What that operation does is described in unusual detail: shot rock drilled, blasted, loaded into haulage trucks, taken to an underground jaw crusher and conveyed up to a surface plant, where finished lime products are made for construction, agriculture and chemical industries.
The two rows are recorded separately and this page does not merge them. But a mine that conveys to a surface plant, and a surface lime plant carrying the same name a few miles off in the same county, is a shape a seller here will recognise.
Which matters because the law splits on exactly that boundary
That distinction between the mine and the plant is not academic, because Kentucky’s weight rules split at precisely that point.
Crushed stone is on the state’s ten per cent bulk-commodity list. Lime is not. So a load of aggregate coming off the rock carries the allowance, and a load of finished lime leaving a plant does not — one company, one Pendleton County road, two legal weights, and the kiln is what separates them. The same split runs between the Black River workings and this plant.
A hauler working both ends of that was keeping two numbers in mind. Tell us which end your truck worked, because it also changes the body: aggregate wears a tipper at the liner and the tailgate, while finished lime is bulk-trailer and blower work with an entirely different maintenance history.
And the distances say what kind of market this is
Those loads do not have far to go. This plant sits 23.4 miles from Cincinnati and 30.0 miles from Maysville, where the company’s other northern Kentucky lime plant is.
Twenty-three miles to a major city is a day-trip market rather than a long-haul one, and it puts a truck from here in a particular category: moderate distances, frequent runs, and a road network that has to carry industrial weight into a metropolitan area.
No bridge measurement exists for this row and none is borrowed from elsewhere. Kentucky’s posted-bridge list was not located for this work either, so nothing here says whether postings bind on the roads out of this plant.
Kentucky weight law
The list, and the omission that decides it
That split between rock and product is written into one statute, and the whole list is the thing to have in front of you.
Kentucky allows a ten per cent tolerance on the axle weight provisions for vehicles engaged exclusively in transporting crushed stone, fill dirt and rock, soil, bulk sand, coal, phosphate muck, asphalt, concrete, solid waste, tankage or animal residues, livestock, feed for livestock or poultry, and agricultural products — except on the interstate system. Lime appears nowhere in it, and neither does cement or any other manufactured product.
The word “exclusively” also does work at an operation that ships both. A vehicle engaged exclusively in hauling one of the named commodities gets the tolerance; one that alternates is a question this page cannot settle, and what the condition requires in practice was not established here.
The larger coal-haul figure belongs to a separate certified network — 90,000 lb on one steering axle plus two tandem axles with a five per cent tolerance — and that certified road list was not read for this work.
KRS 189.222(1)(c) and KRS 177.9771. Information, not legal advice.
Kentucky paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Beyond the weight, the paperwork is that one sentence.
Everything after it is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where one never existed there is a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.
The statute brands a vehicle salvage when parts and labour to rebuild it to pre-accident condition and legal operation exceed 75 per cent of its retail value, with the cost of reinstalling a deployed airbag system excluded from that calculation — a flat percentage rather than a formula.
And on a truck standing at somebody else’s yard the clock is 45 days, after which, with reasonable or agreed storage or towing charges unpaid, it may be sold to pay them. Liens are recorded through the county clerk here and may be transmitted electronically.
KRS 186A.520 on branding, KRS 186A.195 on liens, and KRS ch. 376 on storage and towing. Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
None of that narrows what we will look at. Tankers and bulk trailers off the lime side, dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the rock side, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, box trucks and straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.
Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Pendleton 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 plant 3.67 miles out, the Black River workings elsewhere in the county and the 23.4 miles up toward the city are simply where a lot of them turn up.
On collection: we come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow with nobody coming out at all, or you bring it to us. Any of those is ordinary here.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Mentor
- 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.
- It hauled lime, not stone.Then it ran without the ten per cent tolerance, because lime is not on the Kentucky list and crushed stone is. Same Pendleton County roads, different legal weight. It does not change whether we buy the truck.
- It carried dry bulk its whole life.Then say so. Blowers, hoses, hatch seals and tank interiors are where that work shows, and a bulk trailer off a lime plant reads very differently from a tipper off the rock.
- What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none ever existed there is a bonded route.
- How am I paid?Cash or electronic payment. That is the whole list.
- How far out do you come?All of Pendleton County and the river counties either side, and up the 23.4 miles toward Cincinnati. We also buy trucks with nobody coming out at all and arrange the tow.
Why people call
Those are the practical questions, and the reasons behind them are mostly personal. Retiring — and in a county with an employer the size of the Black River operation in it, that is a common story. A medical that didn’t go the way it used to. A contract that finished. A truck standing at the back of a yard since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it isn’t turning a wheel.
It reads the same across Pendleton County, whether the truck pulled a bulk trailer off the lime plant 3.67 miles out, hauled rock, or did neither.
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.
Kentucky weight and title rules read from the Kentucky Revised Statutes in August 2026 — verify with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet before acting on them. Commodity, county and attachment distance from the central node list; the mining method, employment and product description of the county’s underground operation from the MSHA mines dataset. The two rows are recorded separately and are not merged here. Distances to neighbouring cities from the research behind these pages. No bridge measurement exists for this row and none is borrowed; Kentucky’s posted-bridge list was not located and the certified coal-haul road list was not read.