We buy trucks in Mercer

MSHA records 12 employees at the Plant #81. What the node list cannot tell you is where it is.

This row carries a coordinate identical to one other row in the survey, Plant #80, and the list files the two of them in different counties — Andrew and Nodaway. Two operations in two counties cannot occupy one point, so at most one of those coordinates is a real location and the other is a placeholder, most likely an operator address inherited during whatever geocoding step built the list.

A third answer comes from outside. The FCC places that shared point in DeKalb County, which neither row names. And the town this row is filed against, Mercer, sits 64.72 miles away from it.

So the coordinate is unusable for saying which county this operation is in, and the county fields are the surviving evidence. The road figures below were measured at the shared point, and they describe that point rather than this operation. We would rather label that than publish a confident number about the wrong ground.

Those measurements are correct about somewhere, and stating them with the caveat attached is more use than withholding them. Within ten miles of the shared point the national bridge file counts 144 structures. 7 are coded posted for load on item 41 and 9 are coded below legal loads on item 70, and the second is the load-restriction measure for this state.

Note again which is larger. The restricted count exceeds the posted count here, as it does in several rural Missouri counties, which is the clearest available demonstration that the two fields are independent codings rather than one containing the other.

The median operating rating of the item-41 group is 15.3 metric tonnes, which no loaded stone truck approaches. Of the 9 restricted by item 70, 8 are county-maintained, the nearest is 3.85 miles out, the lowest rating is 4.5 metric tonnes and the lowest that still admits a loaded commercial vehicle is 11.7 tonnes, about 12.9 US tons — barely over the tare of an empty tandem, which leaves very little stone on top of it.

Across DeKalb County as a whole, 7 of 185 county-maintained structures fail item 70. That is the county the FCC places the point in; the node list itself files the two rows on that point to Andrew County and Nodaway County, and this page has already said why the disagreement cannot be settled. A county rate that low beside a local group that tight is the ordinary shape of this problem: the network is fine and a handful of specific crossings are not.

Those crossings set one limit. The weight statute sets the other, and Missouri writes it in one place.

Missouri sets gross weight at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb, and it keeps the federal ceiling in place by providing that nothing in the section allows a load heavier than Title 23 of the United States Code does.

Then subsection 6 does something none of the other states on file do for this trade. Any vehicle or combination running on highways other than the interstate system may go over the single-axle, tandem-axle and gross limits by up to two thousand pounds — and that allowance names no commodity at all. Everywhere else the relief is written for somebody in particular. Tennessee’s ten per cent names sand, coal, clay, shale and phosphate, and leaves crushed stone out. Kentucky’s names crushed stone first. Alabama gives nobody anything. Missouri gives everybody two thousand pounds once you are off the interstate, which at 80,000 lb is about two and a half per cent.

One thing in that section is genuinely unsettled and we are not going to tidy it up. Subsection 6 says the allowance may be taken against the gross limit. Subsection 3’s own 80,000 lb cap is written as subject to subsections 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14, and it does not name subsection 6. Both texts are on the books, and how they work together is not something the research resolved.

The commodity allowances Missouri does write are all built the same way and all stop in the same place. Grain and grain co-products may run ten per cent over during harvest; milk and livestock may reach 85,500 lb; local log trucks reach 109,600 lb. Every one of them applies only on highways other than the interstate system. That is not a quirk of Missouri drafting. Title 23 caps the Interstate System at 80,000 lb and no state can raise it, so any state allowance above 80,000 lb has to live off the interstate by construction. The state route is the loaded road and the interstate is the empty one.

One more thing separates Missouri from its neighbours: it prices an overload rather than stopping it. The fine runs by the pound on a rising scale — two cents for each pound of the first five hundred, five cents to a thousand, ten cents above that. What the section does not carry is a do-not-move rule. Tennessee makes it separately unlawful to move an overloaded truck until the load comes off, so an overweight truck there stops where it stands. Missouri lets it carry on and sends a bill. Those are different risks, and over a few years they produce different loading habits and a differently worn truck.

RSMo §§ 304.180 and 304.240; 23 U.S.C. § 127. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond weight, the paperwork comes down to a single sentence.

We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Both are ordinary and neither one stops a sale.

Missouri’s salvage rule is worth a minute because it reaches almost nothing in the stock we buy. A vehicle is branded salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds eighty per cent of the fair market value immediately before the damage, and where the damage happened no more than six years after the manufacturer’s model year designation. Both limbs have to be met, not either one.

Both numbers are outliers, and they pull the same way. Eighty per cent is the highest threshold on file — Kentucky, Alabama and Tennessee all brand at seventy-five. Six model years is the shortest age window found anywhere; Arkansas runs seven and Tennessee ten. Past that window the Missouri rule does not reach a vehicle at all, however badly it was damaged. For a used commercial truck the age limb is nearly always the operative one and the percentage nearly never is.

The repair side leaves out more here than in any other state on file: inflatable safety restraints, tires, sound systems, damage from hail, and sales tax on parts and materials. Kentucky excludes airbag reinstallation and nothing else. Two states can share a threshold and still be adding up different repair bills.

Where the brand does land, Missouri applies it on the way out rather than on the way in. A salvage vehicle is retitled only after an examination recorded on Form 551, carried out by an inspector of the Missouri State Highway Patrol or by the St. Louis city or county auto theft unit, and that certificate runs out six months from the date of inspection. The title issued afterwards carries the words PRIOR SALVAGE. Minnesota uses the same two words for the opposite end of the process, branding on acquisition; the same phrase means an incoming obligation in one state and an outgoing designation in the other.

RSMo § 301.010; Missouri Department of Revenue Form 551. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule was last checked.

All of that is equipment we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the stone. Farm trucks and grain hauls off the country around it. Day cabs, road tractors, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew. Around the Plant #81 — twelve people on the MSHA roll, on a point the node list also files under Andrew County and Nodaway County — and across DeKalb County and the 64.72 miles of ground toward Mercer, this country turns over a steady amount of it.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them. Out here buying it remotely and arranging the tow is often the simplest path, with nobody visiting at all — and we can equally come to you and drive it away, come to you and tow it, or take it here if you would rather bring it.

• 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.
• Where is this operation, exactly?The public record does not agree with itself. The node list files this row and its twin in Andrew County and Nodaway County on one shared coordinate, the FCC puts that point in DeKalb County, and the named town is 64.72 miles from it. We say so rather than pick one. It makes no difference to buying your truck.
• It has worked round a posted crossing for years.That is likely here. The lowest crossing near the recorded point that still takes a loaded commercial vehicle is rated about 12.9 US tons, so a truck on that route has been running part-loaded rather than full.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route. Neither one stops a sale.
• Do you come out?Yes. We can come to you and drive it away, or come to you and tow it. We can also buy it remotely and arrange the tow with no visit at all, and you’re welcome to drive it to us if that suits you better.
• How far out do you come?All of DeKalb County and the ones around it, Andrew County and Nodaway County included. Distance has never stopped a sale.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup.

Beyond a contract finishing, the reasons are mostly personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A partnership splitting and the equipment with it. A truck that stopped earning and has been sitting since, where every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning 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. That’s what we’re here for. Around the Plant #81, and across the north-west counties this row is filed to — Andrew County and Nodaway County both — there is usually one sitting.