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

Three rail-yard rows carry this town, all of them Canadian National, at 0.83, 1.19 and 1.47 miles from the middle of it. Two of the three are the same story told twice. One is called Auto Alliance and the other Mazda Plant, they sit 1.10 miles apart, and both names record the same arrangement.

AutoAlliance International was the joint venture that built vehicles on this site. Mazda left it in 2012 and the plant became Ford’s, so both node names now describe something that ended more than a decade ago while the rails and the buildings carried on. It is a good reminder that a name on a map is a historical record rather than a current one.

The Auto Alliance coordinate does not actually land here either — it falls inside Woodhaven, which has a page of its own. What moves through any of the three could not be determined from anything we read, so none of it is characterised.

Those ramps do have one function the record is clear about. Auto Alliance is a finished-vehicle facility, which loads cars and trucks off railcars onto multi-car road trailers — so the road equipment working out of it is car-haul tractor-trailers rather than general freight. Michigan holds six such rows, more than any other state.

Beside them is a genuine vehicle assembly plant. Statewide, ten of Michigan’s sixteen automotive rows are assembly plants and the other six make components; this is one of the ten. Its employment and its output were not established, so neither is claimed.

For a seller that distinction matters more than it sounds. A car-haul rig and a dry-freight day cab can work out of the same Wayne County gate and have led completely different lives, and the decks on the back of one of them are part of the truck rather than an accessory.

Both kinds of work run under a state weight statute that is not the one the rest of the country uses. 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, and eleven has been 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. So a Michigan-legal heavy combination is a physically different vehicle rather than a heavier one, and that follows the truck when it is sold.

Then 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.

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.

Those rules cover trucks we are glad to buy. Car haulers and the tractors that pull them, off ramps like Auto Alliance. 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.

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 — and you are welcome to bring it to us. Downriver Wayne County is easy country for any of that.

• 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. A multi-car trailer is an ordinary thing for us to buy next to a finished-vehicle ramp like Auto Alliance, and the decks are part of the sale.
• The truck is in Woodhaven, not Flat Rock.So is one of the three rail yards on this page. Woodhaven, Brownstown, Rockwood and the rest of Wayne County are all ordinary 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.

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 a lot between here and the Mazda Plant rails, 0.83 miles from the middle of 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.