We buy trucks in Stockton

Cedar County restricts thirty of the 67 county-maintained structures it owns — about forty-five in every hundred, which is first of the 109 Missouri counties that maintain at least twenty of their own. The state rate is closer to one in eight.

Nothing else in Missouri is tighter. At the other end of the same measurement Greene County restricts under one in a hundred and Cole County about one in a hundred, so the range across a single state, under a single weight law, is roughly forty-fold. A county line here can be the boundary between a market where every load is routed and one where none of them are, with identical rules on both sides.

We nearly did not print that, and the reason is worth telling. The row for the quarry at Stockton carries a coordinate that is not its own: it is an exact copy of another quarry’s, 82.76 miles away in a different county. Its own county field and its own city field both say Cedar; only the borrowed coordinate said otherwise.

So every distance-based figure for that row — the ten-mile structure count, the nearest restricted crossing, the commercial floor — describes somewhere else, and none of it appears on this page. What survives the correction is the county, and correcting it moves this operation from about thirty-fifth in the state to first.

That ranking is not an abstraction once you have driven it. Cedar County restricts 44.8% of the crossings it owns against a state county-maintained rate of 12.7%, so the route is chosen before the load is, and a lot of work gets done part loaded because the alternative is a long way round.

The wear that follows is predictable and it is not engine wear. Brakes, running gear, suspension and tyres carry it, and the hour meter runs ahead of the odometer because the miles are slow rather than few. A machine with that profile is normal for Cedar County and it is not a machine that has been abused.

It also means the honest thing a seller can tell us is which roads the truck actually ran, not which pit it is on paper attached to. This lane has now met several rows whose coordinates point at another county entirely, and the record is not a reliable witness to where a machine spent its life.

None of that changes the offer process. We come and look at the truck, or we buy it remotely and arrange the tow. It changes what we ask you about it.

Those county crossings sit under a state ceiling, and the ceiling is identical in the county that restricts nearly half its bridges and the one that restricts almost none.

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. Farm trucks and grain trucks off the Cedar County ground. Day cabs, road tractors, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew. Across Cedar County and Dade 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 bridge count for the ten miles round the quarry?Because the coordinate on that row belongs to a different quarry eighty-odd miles away, so every distance measured from it describes somewhere else. We left all of it off rather than print it.
• It ran part loads a lot of the time.In this county that is the job. Cedar County restricts nearly half the crossings it maintains, first in Missouri, so routes are chosen before loads are.
• 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 Cedar County and the ones around it, Dade County and Polk 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 Cedar County and Dade County there is usually one sitting.