We buy trucks in Indianola

The Heathman yard is the single piece of researched freight infrastructure attached to this town, and it is operated by the Columbus & Greenville Railway. Its coordinate lies 5.39 miles from the centroid.

It was attached here by nearest-place fallback rather than by sitting inside the town. The point lies outside any incorporated place at all, and this is simply the closest place that holds a page. That is a fact about the record, not a claim about the yard.

What the yard handles could not be determined from any source read for that research, so nothing is said here about its traffic. The coordinate is the mean of a track polyline’s vertices rather than a surveyed gate — every rail-yard row in this set is derived that way — so read 5.39 miles as the distance to the middle of the track, not to a driveway.

Beyond that yard, everything researched nearby sits on the water. The Port of Greenville is 18.6 miles from the Heathman coordinate, the TransMontaigne liquid bulk terminal 19.4 miles, and the Port of Rosedale 25.7 miles.

Those are node-to-node distances between coordinates rather than road miles, and they are worth stating that way round. A river terminal pulls tank trucks and flatbeds from a wider ring than a small yard does, so the trucks that turn up for sale here have often been running to Greenville and back rather than anywhere local.

Nothing else researched sits in Sunflower County. That is a statement about what has been looked at, not about what is on the ground — absence in a research corpus is not absence in a county.

Those yards are worked by trucks running under a weight schedule with no local wrinkle in it at all, and that is worth saying plainly because it is rare.

Miss. Code § 63-5-33 sets the maximum gross without a special permit at 80,000 lb, and § 63-5-27 sets single axles at 20,000 lb and tandem axles at 34,000 lb. Those are the federal figures exactly. Across the state research on file, Mississippi was the first state in fifteen batches of it whose weight rules produced no distinctive quirk — no calendar tolerance, no axle ladder, no pro-rata permit, no tyre-width limit, no grandfathered figure. The finding is the absence.

There is a single allowance, and it is bound to the commodity rather than general. § 63-5-33 lifts the ceiling for vehicles hauling sand, gravel, woodchips, wood shavings, sawdust, fill dirt, agricultural products, products for recycling and materials for highway construction or repair, and only from the point of loading to the point of unloading for processing. General freight moving to or from a yard is outside it, so for most of the traffic here the plain figures are the figures.

Where the allowance does reach, it stops at three separate doors. Neither the increased weights nor any tolerance is allowed on federal interstate highways, nor on other highways where a tolerance is specifically prohibited by the Transportation Commission, the county board of supervisors or the municipal governing authorities under § 63-5-27. 23 U.S.C. § 127 caps the interstate above it, and whether any particular road carries a prohibition can be decided at county or municipal level.

Miss. Code § 63-5-33 on gross weight and the commodity tolerance, § 63-5-27 on axle weights and local prohibitions, and 23 U.S.C. § 127 on the interstate, as recorded in the node research for this state. Information, not legal advice. Mississippi bridge postings and seasonal restrictions were not determined and none is stated here.

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork turns on one distinction that is worth knowing before anybody starts work on a truck.

Mississippi treats a vehicle as a total loss when repair costs equal or exceed 75% of actual cash value. But the statute’s own definition is procedural rather than arithmetical: a salvage vehicle is a vehicle upon which a salvage title has been issued, and salvage titles are issued to insurance companies so that they can dispose of vehicles on which they have paid a total loss claim. The brand follows the insurer’s payment. The percentage describes when that payment usually happens; it is not itself the test.

Four states on file brand at 75%, and each measures it against a different base — retail value in one, pre-damage fair retail from a named class of source in another, fair market value in a third, and actual cash value here. Grouping states by the percentage alone would give a wrong answer in all four.

There are carve-outs, and they are worth reading before assuming a brand. A vehicle is not a salvage vehicle here if it is ten years old or older and worth 1,500 dollars or less, or if the damage requires replacement or repair of five or fewer minor component parts. Whether a particular older truck falls under that value figure is a valuation question and is not answered here.

A repaired salvage vehicle has to pass a state inspection at a designated station before a rebuilt title issues, administered by the Department of Public Safety’s Salvage Inspection Division. Mississippi runs that as a dedicated division of its own; most states on file give the job to the state police or to a licensed mechanic.

None of which stops a sale. A lost title has a counter replacement, a rebuilt title is fine by us, and a salvage brand is a fact about the paperwork rather than a bar to buying the truck.

Miss. Code tit. 63 and the Department of Revenue’s salvage vehicle guidance, as recorded in the node research for this state. Information, not legal advice. The storage and mechanic’s lien clock, lien release, plate return, IRP and the emissions element of the rebuilt inspection were not determined and none is stated. Mississippi has not adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which in any case is a manufacturer sales standard and asks nothing of an owner or an operator.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

In this part of Sunflower County most of what we buy has been working farm ground rather than a gate. The yard on the Columbus & Greenville Railway is 5.39 miles out and the nearest river terminal 18.6 miles beyond it, which means a lot of the mileage on these trucks was put there on county roads.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• 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 engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• 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. A rebuilt one is fine, and Mississippi will have put it through a Salvage Inspection Division station before it issued.
• Do you actually come out here?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 — whichever is easiest for you.
• How far out do you come?Anywhere in Mississippi and anywhere in the country. The Heathman yard is 5.39 miles out and the river terminals at Greenville 18.6 miles beyond that, so this is remote-buy country as often as not: we drive it away, tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it in.

Those reasons are the same everywhere and they are mostly personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck sitting behind a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

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.

Out here, where the one researched node is a yard 5.39 miles from the middle of town and the next is 18.6 miles further on, the truck has usually been parked a while before anybody rings.