Sell your semi truck for cash in Essexville

One rail-yard row is attached here, 1.73 miles from the middle of town, worked by the Lake State Railway. Its name is the railway’s own initials rather than a place, which makes it one of the few rows in this dataset that is not named for somewhere.

That sounds trivial and it is quietly useful. Across this state the name on a rail row has been the least reliable field on it — naming a town the row is not in, a railroad that stopped existing, a company that may or may not still be there. A row named for its own current operator cannot be wrong in any of those ways.

Its coordinate falls outside any incorporated boundary, so this was simply the nearest place holding a page, and what moves through it could not be determined from anything we read. One honestly named yard out past the edge is the whole of the local record in this corner of Bay County.

So the rule to know here is a state one, and it has an unusual shape. Michigan reduces maximum axle and wheel loads through March, April and May, when the freeze-thaw cycle leaves roads at their most vulnerable, and the size of the cut is set by what the road is made of rather than by who maintains it.

It is 25 percent on concrete pavements and concrete-based roads and 35 percent on every other road type, so two adjacent roads carrying the same traffic can get different reductions. The county road commissions can start it early or lift it early on the weather, and while it is in force no overweight permits are issued at all.

For the other nine months the same statute is the most generous in the country, permitting a gross of 164,000 lb on a combination of up to eleven axles — reached by allowing more axles each carrying less rather than heavier ones. So a local truck has spent a quarter of every year working well under what it was built for.

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 the trucks we buy, whatever shape they are in. Day cabs and local tractors of the kind that serve a Lake State Railway yard 1.73 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 across Bay County.

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

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. Bay City is next door and the river towns either side are all ordinary for us.

• 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.
• Am I in Essexville or Bay City?The one rail row on this page is not inside either — its coordinate falls outside any incorporated boundary, 1.73 miles out. Bay County either way, and it has never decided anything for us.
• It has sat outside through the winters.Expected this close to the water, and not a disqualifier. Tell us how long it has stood and whether anything has come off it. Cold and salt find brake lines and air systems first.
• It only ever ran local.Then the odometer understates the work. Interchange runs in and out of a Lake State Railway yard put their wear into brakes and drivelines rather than into miles.
• 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 that 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 Bay County yard out towards the Lake State Railway rails 1.73 miles from town, 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.