Sell your semi truck for cash in Auburn Hills

The point the research holds here is a rail yard called Orion Autoload, operated by Canadian National, 2.53 miles from the middle of town. The name is the useful part: an autoload is a finished-vehicle ramp, where cars and trucks come off the railcars and go onto the road.

Michigan holds six of the forty-five finished-vehicle facilities in this dataset, more than any other state, and every one of them is car-haul work — vehicles leaving a ramp on multi-car road trailers behind a tractor. That is a specific trade with specific equipment, and it is one of the few places where the truck itself is built around the freight rather than the other way round.

There is a second row nearby, 1.55 miles from this one under the same carrier, whose name is the same minus the function word. Two facilities on one site, filed under two different towns. And the Orion Autoload coordinate does not land inside any city boundary at all — Auburn Hills is simply the nearest place that has a page, which tells you the ramp sits out past the edge of things.

Those car-haul trailers sit oddly against Michigan’s weight statute, and it is useful to say why. The state permits a maximum gross of 164,000 lb on a combination of up to eleven axles — the highest regularly usable truck weight in North America, with eleven the ceiling since 1967 — reached by allowing more axles each carrying less rather than heavier axles.

A loaded car hauler almost never gets near a number like that. It runs out of length and height long before it runs out of weight, which means the headroom Michigan is famous for is not the constraint on this particular trade. Useful to know mainly so that nobody assumes the state’s reputation applies to every truck in it.

The seasonal rule reaches everybody, though. Axle and wheel loads are reduced through March, April and May — 25 percent on concrete pavements and concrete-based roads and 35 percent on every other road type — and no overweight permits are issued at all while the restrictions are in force.

On paper the rule is one sentence. We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Everything after that is a fix rather than a category: a lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither one stops a sale.

Gross and axle limits at MCL 257.722, read from the Michigan Vehicle Code and the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Maximum Legal Truck Loadings and Dimensions. Information, not legal advice.

All of it is iron we buy. Car haulers and the tractors that pull them, off Canadian National ramps like Orion Autoload 2.53 miles out. Day cabs and road tractors off the general freight. Flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades. Service bodies, work trucks and pickups off crews.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them — and a car-hauling rig is not a harder sale here than a pickup.

We can come to you and drive it away, come to you and tow it, or buy it remotely and arrange the tow with nobody visiting at all. You are welcome to bring it to us too. This is the north side of the metro, so every one of those is routine.

• 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 is a car hauler with the decks still on it.Good. Leave them on. A multi-car trailer is a normal thing for us to buy, and the decks and ramps are part of what is being sold rather than clutter to strip off first.
• The truck is not really in Auburn Hills.Neither is the ramp on this page — the Orion Autoload coordinate falls outside any city boundary and Auburn Hills is just the nearest place with a page. Rochester Hills, Pontiac, Lake Orion, all of it is ordinary for us.
• It has run loaded one way and empty back for years.Then the wear is uneven in a way the mileage will not show, which is normal on ramp work. Tell us the pattern rather than just the mileage.
• How am I paid?Cash or electronic payment. That is the whole list.
• 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; where none exists there is a bonded route.

None of those is usually the reason for the call. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and never got replaced. A rig standing on a lot somewhere out past Orion Autoload, 2.53 miles from the middle of town, that has not moved since the work stopped — and every month it stands is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

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.