Sell your semi truck for cash in Big Bay

Eagle Mine sits underground out in the Yellow Dog Plains, and it is the only primary nickel mine in the United States. It runs 170 people, has been active on the federal register since December 2011, and its controller is Lundin Mining. For a settlement this size that is an unusually specific thing to have next door.

The part that matters to anybody with a truck is what happens to the ore. It is processed at the Humboldt Mill over near Republic, a repurposed former iron mill running 103 people, and the two sit roughly 40 miles apart by road. There is no private railroad between them. The ore goes by truck.

That is about as direct a statement of local trucking as this research produces anywhere. Forty miles, loaded one way, on northern roads, year in and year out — and it is done by ore haulers and heavy tractors rather than by anything exotic.

That run also explains why equipment here ages the way it does, and the county manages three separate wear chemistries at once. There is magnetite dust off the iron ground. There is acidic mine water at Eagle Mine and at the Humboldt Mill, which is a different problem entirely. And there is lake-effect chloride on every road all winter.

Dust gets into everything that turns. Acidic water finds anything unpainted underneath. Chloride does what road salt does, only for more months of the year than most of the country manages. A truck that has worked here has met all three, and you know better than we do what that does over a few years.

None of it stops us buying. It does mean a northern truck often looks worse than it runs, and we would rather you told us the history than tried to clean it off before we look.

That 40-mile ore run sits under a state weight statute whose seasonal half matters more up here than anywhere else in it. Michigan reduces maximum axle and wheel loads through March, April and May, when the freeze-thaw cycle leaves roads at their most vulnerable, and northern routes stay restricted longest of all.

The cut is set by what the road is made of rather than by who owns it: 25 percent on concrete pavements and concrete-based roads, 35 percent on every other road type, with a 35 mph limit on some vehicles while it is in force. No overweight permits are issued at all in the meantime, which for a loaded ore truck is the whole ball game.

The rest of the year the same statute is the most generous in the country, allowing a gross of 164,000 lb on a combination of up to eleven axles, reached by allowing more axles each carrying less. Nickel ore is dense enough to reach the axle limits with the body well short of full, so the spring reduction bites harder on it than on light freight.

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.

Spring restrictions at MCL 257.722 and the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Spring Weight Restriction Bulletin. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the day it was read.

All of that is work done by trucks we buy. Ore haulers and heavy tractors off the Eagle Mine run. Dump trucks off the road work and the gravel. Day cabs, flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades, and service bodies, work trucks and pickups off crews across Marquette County.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

Out here the honest thing to say is that we usually do not need to come at all: we buy remotely and arrange the tow, which takes a long day out of it for everybody. We can also come to you and drive it away or tow it, and you are welcome to bring it south if you are heading that way anyway.

• 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.
• Will you really come out to the Yellow Dog Plains?Usually we do not need to. Most trucks in Marquette County are bought remotely and towed, with nobody visiting at all. If it does need somebody, we come and either drive it away or tow it. Distance has never stopped a sale.
• It has hauled ore its whole life.Then say so. A dense load reaches the axle limits with the body half empty, so the truck has worked its driveline, brakes and suspension hard while the box stayed sound. It does not change whether we buy it.
• It is covered in dust and the underside looks rough.Expected on this ground — magnetite dust, mine water and winter chloride all at once. Not a disqualifier. Tell us how long it has stood and whether anything has come off it.
• 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 why the phone rings. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and never got replaced. A tractor standing on a lot somewhere between Eagle Mine and the Humboldt Mill road, that has not moved in two years and is still costing insurance every month.

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.