We buy trucks in Shelbyville

The pit here records 5 employees, 3.80 miles from the middle of Shelbyville. The number that matters is the county’s: across Shelby County 15 of 58 county-maintained structures fail the load test, which is about one in four against a Missouri county-maintained rate closer to one in eight.

Twice the state rate is a real constraint on a farm-and-stone economy where most of the network is county road rather than state highway. It means a loaded truck out of here is routed rather than simply pointed, and the routing is done on county bridges that somebody has already decided will not take a full one.

Within ten miles the national bridge file counts 73 structures and eight of them carry a posting. We are not going to convert that eight into a restriction count, because the separate load-test figure for this circle was not measured — and on the evidence of the rest of the state the two columns are independent, so one does not stand in for the other.

Absence of a measurement and a measurement of zero are different things. What we have for this circle is a posting count; what we have for the county is a load-test share; and those are the two figures on this page.

That gap is fitting, because this node is one of the last two crushed-stone rows in Missouri — the pair that closed the state at 145 of 145. Eight batches of work end here.

What the finished state shows is not flattering to the record it was built from. Of those 145 Missouri rows, 33 carry a county field that disagrees with their own coordinates, or name a city more than fifteen miles away, or both. That is roughly one row in four. Measured the same way Kentucky runs 10.4% and Tennessee 6.2%, so Missouri’s records are the worst of the three by some distance.

It is the reason several pages in this lane say plainly that a pit is not where the record puts it, and the reason this Shelby County page will not turn a posting count into a restriction count. When a quarter of the underlying rows point somewhere other than where they claim, the honest move is to publish what was measured and label it.

For a seller none of that is a problem. It just means we would rather ask you where the truck actually worked than read it off a row.

Those county postings raise a question about who puts them there, and the answer is not the county.

A county highway engineer may set weight limits on county roads and bridges only with the approval of the division engineer of the state transportation department. Notice is by signs along the road and in conspicuous places at each end of the bridge, and violation is a class C misdemeanour plus civil liability for damage done. The seasonal power sits with the state as well: the highways and transportation commission may limit weights where, by reason of thawing of frost, or rains, or new construction, the roads are in a soft condition — and no dates are named, so out here you watch for the signs rather than the calendar.

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, and RSMo §§ 304.210 and 304.220; 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. Grain trucks and farm trucks off the prairie. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the stone. Day cabs, road tractors, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew. Across Shelby County and Marion 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.
• Why is there no restricted-bridge count for the ten miles round here?Because it was not measured for this circle, and we will not substitute the posting count for it. The two columns are independent across Missouri, so one is not a stand-in for the other.
• It ran county roads more than highway.That is the norm here, and it shows. Shelby County restricts about a quarter of the structures it maintains, twice the state rate, so the routing was done on bridges rather than around them.
• 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 Shelby County and the ones around it, Marion County and Monroe 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 Shelby County and Marion County there is usually one sitting.