Louisiana is built around the water. Ports run at Lake Charles, Franklin, Golden Meadow, Brusly and Dulac, petroleum terminals at Baton Rouge, Garyville, Buras and Jonesville, and roll-on/roll-off terminals at New Orleans and Shreveport. Liquid-bulk terminals are thick along the river at Baton Rouge, Chalmette, Carlyss and Alexandria, intermodal ramps work at New Orleans, Avondale, Harahan and Westwego, and rail yards run at Baton Rouge, Addis, Avondale and Bogalusa.
That waterfront work takes every kind of truck, and we buy every kind. A Peterbilt day cab off a New Orleans berth, a Freightliner tank truck out of Baton Rouge, a Mack dump truck near Lake Charles or a Ford dually out of Shreveport all get the same look: send us photos and the details, an offer comes back, and if it suits you we can come to you, buy it remotely, or you can drive it to us.
Louisiana’s trucking industry is a vital freight state anchored by the Port of New Orleans and extensive petrochemical and agricultural distribution networks.
The axles under it change the number
Whatever it is loaded with when it leaves the wharf, what it may weigh on the way out is set in one place. Louisiana does not write one gross figure and stop. Under La. R.S. § 32:386 a combination that carries a tridem or a quadrum axle may run to 88,000 lb on a state-maintained highway, and the interstate system is carved out of that allowance. The condition is the vehicle’s own configuration rather than its cargo or its route — more axles under the load, more gross on top of it. The harvest permits sit above that again. Sugarcane runs on its own permit to 100,000 lb, and that one has a hardware condition: the trailer carries an additional single axle, six for the combination, so a five-axle rig does not qualify however it is loaded. Most states that grant a heavy commodity allowance switch it off at the interstate and leave it there. Louisiana instead writes a second, lower permit that works on the interstate, and 83,400 lb is above the federal figure rather than below it.
La. R.S. § 32:386, § 32:387 and § 32:387.7.
The ordinary case is short: we need a title. If it is lost there is a duplicate, and if the truck is old enough that it never had one there is a route for that too. Louisiana is a civil-law state and its parishes are not counties with a different name on them.