Wayne
Two yards with the same name, and the carrier is the only difference
Two rail-yard rows carry this city’s name, 0.54 and 1.02 miles from the middle of it, and both are simply named for the city. What separates them in the record is a carrier suffix bolted onto each: one belongs to CSX Transportation and the other to Norfolk Southern.
They are two facilities that happen to share a town name, not one facility written down twice, and the only thing establishing that is the carrier. It is the same lesson that keeps coming up across this state: the name on a rail row is the least reliable field on it, and the operator is the one that settles arguments.
What moves through either of them could not be determined from anything we read, so neither is characterised here.
And an assembly plant, which puts car haulers on the road
Those yards sit beside 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 here.
What an Assembly Plant puts on the road is car-haul work: finished vehicles leaving a ramp on multi-car road trailers behind a tractor. That is a specific trade with specific equipment, and one of the few cases where the truck is built around the freight rather than the other way round.
So within 1.02 miles of the middle of this town there is heavy rail under two carriers and a plant sending car haulers out. For a small city that is a lot of commercial vehicle in a short radius, and it shows in whose driveways they end up.
Michigan weight law
The statute counts axles, not trucks
All of it 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, and eleven has been 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.
Which matters when a truck changes hands, because an eleven-axle Michigan combination is a physically different vehicle rather than a heavier one. 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.
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.
What we buy here
Those rules cover trucks we are glad to buy. Car haulers and the tractors that pull them, off the Assembly Plant ramps. Day cabs and road tractors off the Norfolk Southern yard 1.02 miles out. 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 — and a car-hauling rig is not a harder sale here than a pickup.
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. Westland, Romulus, Canton and the rest of the western county are all routine.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine. That covers the decks on a car hauler too: they are part of the truck.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Wayne
- 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. Next to an Assembly Plant a multi-car trailer is an entirely ordinary thing for us to buy, and the decks and ramps are part of the sale.
- Do you cover the rest of the western county?Yes — Westland, Romulus, Canton, Inkster and out past the Norfolk Southern rails 1.02 miles from the middle of town.
- 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.
Why people call
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 near the Assembly Plant, 0.54 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.
Michigan weight rules read from MCL 257.722 and Michigan Department of Transportation publications in August 2026 — verify with the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Michigan Secretary of State before acting on them. Plant and rail-yard facts from the city-pages node list.