We buy trucks in Taos

Of the 109 Missouri counties that maintain at least twenty structures of their own, Cole County ranks a hundred and eighth for the share that will not carry a legal load. About one bridge in a hundred, against a state county-maintained rate closer to one in eight.

That is very nearly the easiest road network in the state, and it is worth setting against the other end of the same measurement. Cedar County restricts about forty-five in every hundred and ranks first; Greene County, like this one, restricts under one in a hundred. The range across Missouri is roughly forty-fold, and the weight law is identical on both sides of every county line in it.

For a truck that worked out of here the consequence is straightforward and it is good news. Loads were not routed around the network; they went the direct way. The miles are highway miles rather than slow county ones, and the hour meter tends to sit where the odometer suggests it should rather than well ahead of it.

That is a different machine from a Cedar County or Wayne County truck of the same age and make, and the difference is in the running gear rather than in the engine.

Beyond the county figure the record thins out quickly. The only researched site the node list attaches to Taos is a National Guard training area associated with Jefferson City, whose coordinate reverse-geocodes to Cole County a few miles from the village.

Its acreage, its strength and its mission were not established, and the row is recorded as thin by the people who compiled it. So this page will not describe what happens there. We are not going to fill in what a training site usually looks like and present it as a fact about this one.

What is left is the county, the capital a short way up the river, and the ordinary mix of farm and construction work that goes with both. That is a smaller page than some in this lane, and we would rather it were smaller than padded.

None of it changes how a truck gets bought. It changes only what we are willing to claim about the ground it worked.

Those roads carry the ordinary Missouri limits, and above them a permit regime worth knowing.

Legal gross weight is 80,000 lb unless the equipment is specialised. The maximum that can be permitted is 160,000 lb for a truck-tractor semi-trailer combination and 152,000 lb for specialised equipment. Permitted axle weights run to 20,000 lb on a single, 46,000 lb on a tandem group, 60,000 lb on a triple and 72,000 lb on a quadrum group, and a single-trip permit requires seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of combined single limit automobile liability cover — against the three hundred thousand dollar indemnity bond Alabama asks in comparable circumstances.

Under that sits the harvest provision, written the way every Missouri allowance is written. A vehicle or combination hauling grain or grain co-products during times of harvest may run up to ten per cent over the maximum weight limitation, but expressly not on the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Title 23 of the United States Code caps the Interstate System and no state may raise it, so any allowance above the ceiling has to live off the interstate by construction.

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. Farm trucks and grain trucks off the river bottoms. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the construction work. Day cabs, road tractors, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew. Across Cole County and Osage 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.
• Is there a base at Taos?Not in the village. The nearest researched site is a National Guard training area associated with the capital, in the same county, and what it does was not established.
• The mileage is high but the hours are not.That fits this county. Cole County restricts about one in a hundred of what it maintains, near the bottom of the state, so loads went the direct way rather than the long way round.
• 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 Cole County and the ones around it, Osage County and Callaway 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 Cole County and Osage County there is usually one sitting.