We buy trucks in Cosby

Cosby is in Andrew County, and the census counts 130 people here, at 1,383 per square mile, with a median age of 27.7 years.

What we know about Cosby is what the census records and what Missouri 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.

That route out is where the state stops being an abstraction. Missouri sets the ceiling before any local sign lowers it.

In Missouri the maximum gross weight, vehicle or combination is 80,000 lb, subject to the single-axle and tandem-axle limits (RSMo § 304.180.6).

In Missouri the single axle weight limit is 20,000 lb (RSMo § 304.180.1).

In Missouri the tandem axle weight limit is 34,000 lb (RSMo § 304.180.1).

Those limits decide the route. The title decides whether there is a sale at all.

Missouri's salvage definition reaches only a vehicle no more than six years after its model year designation. Most of what we buy is a good deal older than that, and for those trucks that definition does not reach them at all, whatever the arithmetic on the repair would say.

In Missouri, fair market value means the retail value of the vehicle, taken from a current nationally recognized compilation of retail values, from a market survey of comparable vehicles, or by an insurer's uniformly applied industry procedure (RSMo § 301.010(55)).

In Missouri, a vehicle is also salvage if its owner or a secured party declares it so, if an insurer declares it salvage in settling a claim, if its ownership is evidenced by a salvage title, or if it is abandoned property titled as salvage (RSMo § 301.010(55)(b)-(e)).

In Missouri, the definition reaches a motor vehicle, semitrailer or house trailer, with no restriction to passenger vehicles (RSMo § 301.010(55)).

Those two rules meet 130 people in Cosby, Andrew County, at a household median around $57,917 and a density of 1,383 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.

Do you actually come to Andrew 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? 130 people at 1,383 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.