We buy trucks in Richmond

Ray County Stone Producers records 23 employees, the largest crew of any pit in this lane, 8.63 miles from the middle of Richmond. The number that describes working here is not the crew, though. It is 11.7.

Within ten miles the national bridge file counts 90 structures. Sixteen are coded below legal loads, and every one of the sixteen is county-maintained. The lowest operating rating among them is 10.8 metric tonnes — under the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump, so no commercial vehicle crosses it at all. The next one up, the lowest that admits a commercial vehicle, is rated 11.7 tonnes.

Over the tare, 11.7 tonnes leaves about 0.7 tonnes of stone. Seven hundred kilogrammes, against the twenty-five tonnes a legal 80,000 lb truck carries. That crossing is open to a loaded truck only in the most technical sense; in practice it is a crossing you route around, and the nearest of the sixteen is 1.37 miles from the pit.

Across Ray County 29 of 100 county-maintained structures fail the load test. That is sixteenth of the 109 Missouri counties with at least twenty of their own, against a state rate closer to one in eight.

That county figure is the thing to hold on to when somebody describes a machine by the metro it worked out of. Within the eight counties measured around here the share of county-maintained structures failing the load test runs from 1.1 per cent in Jackson County, a hundred and sixth of the 109, to the 29.0 per cent in Ray County that ranks sixteenth. The two are about forty miles apart across the Missouri River.

Part of the Jackson County figure is a denominator problem recorded separately for that county. But Clay County is metropolitan too and posts a quarter of what it maintains, twenty-second of the same list, so the denominator does not explain the range on its own. Pettis County runs about 21.9 per cent and Saline County about 23.8.

So this market spans a county that restricts almost nothing it owns and a county that restricts nearly a third, with a river between them that has few crossings. Two trucks can both be honestly described as having worked out of Kansas City and have had completely different lives.

What that means for a machine off this side of the river is a lot of part loads and a lot of deliberate routing. The restricted crossings here constrain which way a load goes and how much it carries when it goes that way. A route that avoids them carries a full load and costs mileage; a route that uses them carries a part load. The wear lands on running gear and brakes, and the engine hours run ahead of the odometer.

Those caps belong to individual structures. The ceiling over all of them is the state’s.

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.

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, with impoundment until the fines are paid also on the table. 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. Grain trucks and farm trucks off the river bottoms. Day cabs, road tractors, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew. Across Ray County and Clay County this country turns over a steady amount of it.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them. 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 nobody visiting at all, and you’re welcome to bring it to us if that suits you better.

• 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 ran part loads more often than full ones.That is the county, not the driver. The lowest crossing here that admits a loaded truck at all leaves about seven hundred kilogrammes over an empty tandem’s tare, so part loads are how the work gets done.
• It is described as a Kansas City truck.Then it is worth saying which side of the river. Jackson County restricts about one in ninety of what it maintains and Ray County nearly a third, and they are forty miles apart.
• 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 Ray County and the ones around it, Clay County and Carroll County included. Distance has never stopped a sale.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup.

Beyond a season ending, 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 by the end of the week. That’s what we’re here for. Across Ray County and Clay County there is usually one sitting.