Sell your semi truck for cash in Pontiac

Two rail-yard rows are attached to this city, 1.62 and 1.71 miles from the middle of it, and both belong to Canadian National. One carries the city’s own name and the other a bare compass direction, so between them they share no name stem at all and nothing in this research pairs them.

Ninety yards separates their two distances, which on its own would be a strong hint they are one facility recorded twice. But the rule that resolves those cases works on shared names rather than on proximity, and here there is no shared name to work with. So they stand as two, and the honest description is that the question was never settled rather than that it was answered.

What either handles could not be determined from any source we read. Two Canadian National rows within a couple of miles of the middle of the city is the whole of the local record.

Whatever runs between them runs under a state weight statute with an unusual seasonal 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 state and 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. It permits 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 road tractors of the kind that serve a Canadian National yard 1.62 miles out. Dump trucks off the road work and the demolition. Flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades. 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. Oakland County and the roads out of it are all routine.

• 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.
• How far out do you come?All of Oakland County and well past it — Waterford, Auburn Hills, Rochester Hills and the townships between. Often we do not need to come at all.
• 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 short heavy shifts.Then the odometer understates it. Runs in and out of a Canadian National yard 1.71 miles from the middle of the city 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 questions 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 lot in Oakland County near the Canadian National rails 1.62 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.