Stevens County
Where Chokio sits
Chokio is in Stevens County, and the census counts 392 people here, at 895 per square mile, with a median age of 44.5 years.
What we know about Chokio is what the census records and what Minnesota law requires; the yards, pits and depots we have researched elsewhere have no entry here. So the question we can actually answer is how a truck gets out, not who else might want it.
Minnesota weight law
That road has a number on it
That route out is where the state stops being an abstraction. Minnesota sets the ceiling before any local sign lowers it.
In Minnesota the maximum gross weight, vehicle or combination is 80,000 lb on all streets and highways, unless posted at a lower axle weight under Minn. Stat. 169.87, subd. 1 (Minn. Stat. 169.824, subd. 2(1)).
In Minnesota the maximum single axle weight is 20,000 lb on a paved street or highway, and 18,000 lb on an unpaved one (Minn. Stat. 169.823, subd. 1(2)).
In Minnesota the maximum weight on a two-axle group is 34,000 lb where the axle centres are 4 to 8 feet apart, rising with spacing to 51,000 lb at 20 feet (Minn. Stat. 169.824, subd. 1).
Minnesota paperwork
Then the paperwork has to match the truck
Those limits decide the route. The title decides whether there is a sale at all.
In Minnesota the salvage threshold is 80 percent of the value of the vehicle immediately before the damage occurred, which the cost of repairs must exceed for the vehicle to be a salvage vehicle (Minn. Stat. 168A.01, subd. 17b).
In Minnesota the self-insured owner threshold is 80 percent of the vehicle's actual cash value, above which the owner must apply for a title bearing a salvage or a prior salvage brand (Minn. Stat. 168A.151, subd. 1(f)).
In Minnesota, a vehicle is a salvage vehicle when an insurance company has declared a total loss on it or paid a total-loss claim, with no repair-cost percentage involved at all (Minn. Stat. 168A.01, subd. 17b).
So what leaves Chokio
Those two rules meet 392 people in Chokio, Stevens County, at a household median around $47,000 and a density of 895 per square mile. A truck sitting in a driveway here is a working asset that has stopped working, whatever the size of the place it stopped in.
What we take out of a place like this is sleeper tractors and day cabs, dump trucks and roll-offs, box trucks and flatbeds, pickups and duallys, and the service and utility bodies that outlive the business that bought them.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Chokio
Do you actually come to Stevens County? Yes. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us.
Do you come out to a place this size? 392 people at 895 per square mile is a place we reach the same way we reach anywhere else. The truck decides whether we buy it, not the population.
How do you pay? We pay either cash or electronically.