Michigan's trucks mostly stay in Michigan. FMCSA's census, in the release of October 2026, counts close to 71,000 carriers at Michigan addresses, and about four in five of them are registered for in-state work only. Nearly six in ten are private fleets, companies hauling their own goods rather than hauling for hire. Fourteen thousand of them carry machinery and large objects, close to ten thousand carry grain, feed and hay, more than eight and a half thousand carry farm supplies, seven thousand carry logs, poles and lumber, and seven thousand carry motor vehicles. Picture the trucks behind those numbers: a heavy-haul tractor moving a press between plants in the Detroit suburbs, the semi truck pulling a car hauler out of a yard in Wayne County, a grain truck in the Thumb, the log truck coming down from the Upper Peninsula, a dump truck loading at Rogers City or Maybee, the milk tanker on a dairy route, and the box truck or pickup one of those private fleets runs for its own deliveries.
The freight is on the lakes and the rails. Ships call at Detroit, Monroe, Marine City, Alpena, Presque Isle, Clark Township in Mackinac County, Muskegon, Manistique and Marquette, and containers go onto rail at River Rouge, Delray and Livernois on Detroit's south side, at Dearborn Heights and at the Moterm yard in Ferndale. Of the 117 rail yards in our data most are on that same south side, at River Rouge, Zug Island, Melvindale and Flat Rock, with the car haulers loading at the Lincoln Auto yard in Melvindale, and Pontiac, Durand, Grand Ledge, Saginaw, Midland and Manistee have yards of their own. Cement comes out of Charlevoix, Alpena and River Rouge, limestone out of the big quarries at Rogers City, Presque Isle, Cedarville, Drummond Island and Port Inland near Manistique and the smaller ones at Maybee, Bellevue and Monroe, salt from the mine under Detroit, gypsum from Tawas City, and iron ore from the Tilden mine at Palmer with the Eagle mine at Big Bay and the Humboldt mill at Republic beside it. There are 64 sand and gravel pits in the towns our data covers, Holly, Jenison, Oxford and Brown City among them. Fuel loads at River Rouge, Taylor, Romulus, Woodhaven, Ferrysburg, Holland, Jackson, Niles, St. Clair, Marysville, Flint, Marshall, Owosso, Essexville, Lansing, Cheboygan and Rogers City. The Detroit Arsenal at Warren, Selfridge at Mount Clemens, Camp Grayling and Fort Custer at Augusta keep military fleets. Milk is the top farm product in 28 of Michigan's 83 counties in USDA's 2022 census, corn in 25, cattle in ten, soybeans in eight and cut Christmas trees in three, so the milk tanker, the grain truck and the flatbed belong here too. Say where the truck is and whether you want it collected, bought from a distance, or you'd rather bring it to us.
Instant title at the Secretary of State
The title settles most of it, and Michigan makes the paper easy: every Secretary of State branch offers instant title service, so a lost one is replaced across the counter. In Detroit there are branches at 2835 Bagley Street, 580 East Warren Avenue and 17500 Livernois Avenue; in Warren, 11533 East 12 Mile Road; in Dearborn, 5090 Schaefer Road; in Grand Rapids, 3601 28th Street SE; in Lansing, 3315 East Michigan Avenue; in Flint, 310 East Third Street; in Ann Arbor, 295 North Maple Road. Get the title in hand, then send us the truck.
Clear the lien first if there is one, with the lender's payoff figure, because that is the slow part. A salvage or scrap brand on the title is something to mention, not something that stops the sale.
Eleven axles and the spring thaw
Michigan runs its own rulebook. Section 257.722 of the Vehicle Code sets its axle loads so that a combination of as many as eleven axles reaches 164,000 pounds gross by MDOT's own arithmetic, more than twice the federal 80,000, and eleven has been the ceiling since 1967. It gets there with lighter axles rather than heavier ones, 18,000 on an axle nine feet or more from the next and 13,000 on each axle set closer than that, against the federal 20,000 and 34,000, on the reasoning that pavement wears with the load on each axle rather than with the gross. Every spring the same statute takes it back, cutting axle loads by 25 percent on concrete roads and 35 percent on every other kind through the thaw, and because the whole regime is built on the axle that is a straight cut in what the truck can carry; in 2026 the restrictions began in February, changed again on 30 March and came off through late April. Tell us the axle count and we'll know what we're looking at. A train of gravel on eleven axles, a tandem dump truck that worked to the Michigan numbers, a straight truck that never had to think about them: the same offer, reached the same way.
Write with the year, make, model and VIN, photos from all round, a photo of the title, and where the truck sits. Sleeper, day cab, heavy-haul tractor, dump truck, roll-off, mixer, garbage truck, wrecker or rotator, log truck, tanker, boom or crane truck, box truck, straight truck, utility truck, pickup or dually: one message, one offer.