Sell your semi truck for cash in Lowell

King Milling has been working at this town for more than 130 years, and it is not a small operation. A recent expansion added a fourth milling line and took total capacity at the site to 25,000 hundredweight a day — two and a half million pounds of flour, every day, off one site in Kent County.

That makes it the second-largest single mill anywhere in this body of research, behind only Mennel Fostoria over in Ohio. For a town of this size it is the sort of thing that shapes the local truck population more than any road does.

What it does not tell you is how the grain arrives or how the flour leaves, because that was not established for this site. What is established across every flour mill in this research is the shape of the catchment: a mill draws grain by truck from the growing country around it, and that is a lot of loaded inbound miles.

An inbound grain haul is the case Michigan’s weight statute reaches hardest, and it is useful to set out why. 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.

Grain is weight-limited freight. It reaches those axle limits with the trailer well short of full, so a grain truck sits on the legal maximum every loaded trip rather than occasionally. That wears driveline, brakes and suspension while the body stays sound, which is the opposite of what a light-freight lane does.

And when the state reduces axle and wheel loads through March, April and May — 25 percent on concrete pavements and concrete-based roads, 35 percent on everything else — that cut lands on the grain haul in full, because the grain haul was at the limit to begin with. No overweight permits are issued while it is 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.

All of that is work done by trucks we buy. Grain hauls and farm trucks off the country that feeds King Milling. 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 Kent 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. Grand Rapids is down the road and the farm country between is easy 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 has hauled grain its whole life.Then say so. Grain is weight-limited, so a truck feeding a mill like King Milling sat on the axle limits every loaded trip and put its wear into driveline, brakes and suspension while the body stayed sound. It does not change whether we buy it.
• It has been behind the barn since harvest.Ordinary in this part of Kent County, and not a disqualifier. Tell us how long it has stood and whether anything has come off it.
• It has been parked since the spring restrictions.That happens here more than people outside Michigan expect. A grain truck feels the seasonal cut in full because it was at the limit to begin with.
• 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.

Beyond a season that did not pay, the reasons are the personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A farm changing hands. A grain truck standing in a Kent County yard a few minutes from King Milling, that has not turned a wheel since the last harvest it was needed for — and it is still insured.

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.