Eaton County
An autoload ramp that a word-count nearly lost
One row is attached to this village, 2.46 miles out, operated by Canadian National, and it is a finished-vehicle facility — a ramp where cars and trucks come off railcars and go onto multi-car road trailers. So what works out of it is car-haul tractor-trailers rather than general freight.
It also has a small history in the record. An earlier attempt to count these facilities worked from tokens in their names and found twenty-nine. This row was among the sixteen it missed. The corrected census, done properly, holds forty-five, and this is one of them.
That is the same lesson the rest of this state keeps teaching: a count built from names undercounts, because names are not a schema. The coordinate also falls outside any incorporated boundary, so this village is simply the nearest place holding a page, and what moves through the ramp could not be determined.
Michigan weight law
A statute written for weight, on a trade limited by length
Those car-haul trailers sit oddly against Michigan’s weight statute. 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, so the headroom the state is known for is not the constraint on this particular trade. Useful to know mainly so nobody assumes Michigan’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 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.
What we buy here
Those rules cover trucks we are glad to buy. Car haulers and the tractors that pull them, off ramps like the one 2.46 miles out. Day cabs and road tractors off the general freight. Dump trucks off the road work, flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades, and service bodies, work trucks and pickups off crews across Eaton County.
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. Lansing and the townships around are all routine.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine. That covers the decks on a car hauler too: they are part of the truck, not clutter to strip off first.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Dimondale
- 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.Leave them on. Next to a finished-vehicle ramp a multi-car trailer is an entirely ordinary thing for us to buy, and the decks and ramps are part of the sale.
- The truck is not inside the village.Neither is the ramp on this page — its coordinate falls outside any incorporated boundary, 2.46 miles out. Eaton County either way, and it has never decided anything 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.
Why people call
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 car-haul rig standing on an Eaton County lot near the ramp 2.46 miles out, that has not moved since the work stopped 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.
Michigan weight rules read from MCL 257.722 and Michigan Department of Transportation publications in August 2026 — verify with the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Michigan Secretary of State before acting on them. Node facts from the city-pages node list, county attribution from its own county field.