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

Two rail-yard rows are attached to this city, 2.83 and 3.02 miles from the middle of it, both under Canadian National. They carry different names — one a place and one a structure — so there is no duplicate between them.

The structure is the interesting one. It is named for the rail tunnel that runs under the river into Canada, which makes this an international crossing and makes it the second border point in this research. And here is where the page stops: nothing is inferred from that border. What the row handles was not determined, and no customs or crossing procedure is written because none was researched.

That restraint is deliberate. A border town invites a page full of confident sentences about cross-border freight, and we do not have the facts for any of them. Both coordinates also fall outside any incorporated boundary, so this was simply the nearest place holding a page.

What we can tell you about is the state rulebook those trucks load under, and it 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.

So an eleven-axle Michigan combination is a physically different vehicle rather than a heavier one, and that follows the truck when it is sold — one built for these weights may not be configured for anywhere else. Then the same statute reduces axle and wheel loads through March, April and May, by 25 percent on concrete pavements and concrete-based roads and 35 percent on everything else, so the advantage does not survive the thaw.

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 Canadian National yard 3.02 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.

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. Clair County either way, and the lakeshore north of it, 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.
• The truck ran across the border.That is fine and it is common here, but we are not going to pretend to know your paperwork from a web page — nothing about the crossing was researched for this and we are not writing procedure we have not checked. Tell us what you have and we will work it out with you.
• It has sat outside through the winters.Expected this close to the water, and not a disqualifier — a truck standing 2.83 miles from the river in Clair County gets weather an inland one does not. 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, because short heavy runs put their wear into brakes and drivelines rather than into miles. Tell us the pattern.
• 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 yard in Clair County out towards the Canadian National rails 2.83 miles from the middle of the city, 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.