Sell your semi truck for cash in Cadillac

Two rail-yard rows sit here, 0.57 and 1.32 miles from the middle of town, both under the Great Lakes Central Railroad, and one of them is simply the other with a direction bolted on the front. Everywhere else in this research that pattern gets resolved one way or the other. Here it does not.

The two share a carrier and a stem, but there is no shared facility identifier between them, so whether they are one yard recorded twice or two yards three quarters of a mile apart was not resolved. We would rather leave that open on the page than pick the tidier answer. What either handles could not be determined either.

The northern of the two has a coordinate that lands inside Haring, a much smaller place that nonetheless holds a page of its own. That is unusual: almost every other misfiled row in this state points from a small place towards a bigger one, and this is the first that points the other way.

Whatever runs between those yards runs under a state weight statute whose seasonal half matters more up here than further south. 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.

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. The county road commissions can start it early or lift it early on the weather, and no overweight permits are issued at all in the meantime.

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. So a truck that has worked out of here has spent a quarter of every year deliberately underloaded, and crawling while it did, which is easier on it than the headline figure suggests.

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.

Those are trucks we buy, whatever shape they turn up in. Day cabs and local tractors of the kind that serve a short line like the Great Lakes Central Railroad, 0.57 miles out. Dump trucks off the road work and the gravel. Flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades. Service bodies, work trucks and pickups off crews. None of those is a northern speciality — they are everywhere — and that is rather the point.

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

Up here we often do not need to come at all: we buy remotely and arrange the tow, which takes a long day out of the process for everybody. We can also come to you and drive it away or tow it, and you are welcome to bring it down to us 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 actually come out this far?Usually we do not need to. Most trucks in northern Michigan 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.
• The truck is in Haring, not Cadillac.So is one of the two Great Lakes Central Railroad yards on this page, 1.32 miles from the middle of town. It makes no difference to us at all.
• It ran restricted every spring.Most trucks up here did — the northern routes are the ones held longest. That is easier on a truck than hard running, and it is not something we hold against 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 season that ended and never started again. A tractor standing behind a shed somewhere between here and the Great Lakes Central Railroad rails 1.32 miles out, 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.