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

Two rail-yard rows sit here, 1.84 and 2.16 miles from the middle of town, both worked by the Lake State Railway. They carry different names, both coordinates land inside the city they are filed under, and no rule in this research pairs them or moves them.

That is useful to say precisely because it is unremarkable. Across this state the record is full of rows filed under one town and standing in another, names that record railroads which stopped existing decades ago, and pairs half a mile apart that turn out to be one yard written twice. Here there is none of that.

What either handles could not be determined from any source we read, so no claim is made about the traffic. Two yards on a regional carrier, honestly filed, is the whole of the local record.

Whatever runs between them runs 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, with eleven the ceiling since 1967.

It reaches that the opposite way round from how people assume. Michigan’s axle limits are lower than the federal ones: 18,000 lb on a single axle against 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. A higher gross also means fewer trips for the same tonnage.

So an eleven-axle Michigan combination is a physically different vehicle rather than a heavier one, with several trailing axle groups, and that follows the truck when it is sold. 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.

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 are the trucks we buy, whatever shape they are in. Day cabs and road tractors of the kind that serve a Lake State Railway yard 1.84 miles out. Tankers and bulk work. Dump trucks off the road jobs, 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. You are welcome to bring it to us too. Mid-Michigan 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 tanker and I am told that is awkward.It is not awkward for us. Tell us what it last carried and whether it has been cleaned, because that changes the handling rather than the answer.
• It has been parked since the spring restrictions.That happens here more than people outside Michigan expect, and it is not a disqualifier. Tell us how long it has stood and whether anything has come off it.
• It only ever ran local.Then the odometer understates the work. Runs in and out of a Lake State Railway yard 2.16 miles from the middle of town 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 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 tractor standing on a yard between the two Lake State Railway rows, 1.84 miles out on one side and a little further on the other, 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.