Sell your semi truck for cash in Dearborn the easy and convenient way

The industrial point here is not really a plant, it is a district. The complex along the Rouge River covers more than 2,000 acres, with six factories on 600 acres of it, and integrated steelmaking on the same ground run by a separate company. Those figures are reported rather than measured by us, and we have left the steelmaker unnamed because the only name our source gives has not been current for over a decade.

Reported employment at the plant is 7,000, with a pickup coming off the line every 53 seconds. Part of the site, the Electric Vehicle Center, builds an all-electric version of the same truck and is reported to run 750 workers across three shifts.

Steel arriving and finished vehicles leaving on the same 2,000 acres is about as concentrated as commercial road traffic gets in this state. It is why almost every kind of truck on this page has a reason to be here.

Beyond the complex there is a Canadian National yard 1.84 miles from the middle of the city, and what moves through it could not be determined from anything we read. That is the only rail row filed under this city.

It is not the only rail here, though. Two rows filed under Detroit have coordinates that land inside Dearborn, which is the sort of thing that happens all along this boundary — six Detroit-filed rows sit in neighbouring municipalities altogether. The city line runs through the middle of one industrial district rather than around it.

For anybody selling that is the practical point. A truck working this ground crosses between two cities several times a shift, and we have never asked which side of the line it was parked on.

All of that steel and freight loads under a state weight statute that is not the one the rest of the country uses, and on a site that makes both steel and vehicles it is more than trivia. Michigan 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.

It gets there by going the other way on the axle: 18,000 lb on a single axle against a federal 20,000, and 32,000 lb on a tandem against 34,000. More axles, each carrying less, because pavement damage climbs with axle load rather than with gross weight. Steel is dense enough that it reaches those axle limits with the trailer nowhere near full.

The consequence is purchase-relevant, which is why it is here. A Michigan-legal heavy combination is a physically different vehicle from an eighty-thousand-pound five-axle truck, with several trailing axle groups, and its axles will each have carried less over more of them. One built for these weights may not be configured for anywhere else. Tell us the axle count and we will know what we are looking at.

The same statute reduces axle and wheel loads through March, April and May — 25 percent on concrete pavements and concrete-based roads, 35 percent on everything else — so the advantage does not survive the thaw, and no overweight permits are issued while the restrictions are in force.

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.

That statute governs what the truck may carry. The paperwork is much shorter. 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.

Michigan’s bridge postings, its storage and mechanic’s lien clock, plate return and its emissions programme were not established by the research behind this page, so none of them is stated here. Michigan has not adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks rule. If your situation turns on one of those, ask us and we will find out rather than guess at it.

Those rules cover trucks we are glad to buy. Day cabs and road tractors off the steel and the Canadian National yard 1.84 miles out. Car haulers off the finished-vehicle ramps. Flatbeds off the coil and plate work, dump trucks off the demolition and the road jobs, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades, and service bodies, work trucks and pickups off crews.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them — and that includes the pickups built a mile from where you are reading this.

In a district this size every way of collecting a truck is routine. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, or we buy it remotely and arrange the tow with nobody visiting at all. You are welcome to bring it to us instead.

• 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 has hauled steel its whole life.Then say so. A dense load reaches the axle limits with the trailer half empty, so the truck has worked its driveline, brakes and suspension hard while the deck stayed tidy. It does not change whether we buy it.
• My yard is technically in Detroit.Two rail rows filed under Detroit sit inside Dearborn, so the record has the same problem. Wayne County either side of the line is all ordinary for us.
• It has run short heavy shifts around the plant for years.Then the odometer understates it badly. Brakes, frames and drivelines do the work on that pattern. You know better than we do what it has been through.
• 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 questions is usually the reason for the call. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and never got replaced. A tractor standing on a lot off the Rouge River, 1.84 miles from the middle of the city, 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.