Barry County
Where Wheaton sits
Wheaton is in Barry County, and the census counts 427 people here, at 841 per square mile, with a median age of 30.2 years.
What we know about Wheaton is what the census records and what Missouri law requires; the yards, pits and depots we have researched elsewhere have no entry here. So the question we can actually answer is how a truck gets out, not who else might want it.
Missouri weight law
That road has a number on it
That route out is where the state stops being an abstraction. Missouri sets the ceiling before any local sign lowers it.
In Missouri the maximum gross weight, vehicle or combination is 80,000 lb, subject to the single-axle and tandem-axle limits (RSMo § 304.180.6).
In Missouri the single axle weight limit is 20,000 lb (RSMo § 304.180.1).
In Missouri the tandem axle weight limit is 34,000 lb (RSMo § 304.180.1).
Missouri paperwork
Then the paperwork has to match the truck
Those limits decide the route. The title decides whether there is a sale at all.
Missouri's salvage definition reaches only a vehicle no more than six years after its model year designation. Most of what we buy is a good deal older than that, and for those trucks that definition does not reach them at all, whatever the arithmetic on the repair would say.
In Missouri, fair market value means the retail value of the vehicle, taken from a current nationally recognized compilation of retail values, from a market survey of comparable vehicles, or by an insurer's uniformly applied industry procedure (RSMo § 301.010(55)).
In Missouri, a vehicle is also salvage if its owner or a secured party declares it so, if an insurer declares it salvage in settling a claim, if its ownership is evidenced by a salvage title, or if it is abandoned property titled as salvage (RSMo § 301.010(55)(b)-(e)).
In Missouri, the definition reaches a motor vehicle, semitrailer or house trailer, with no restriction to passenger vehicles (RSMo § 301.010(55)).
So what leaves Wheaton
Those two rules meet 427 people in Wheaton, Barry County, at a household median around $37,813 and a density of 841 per square mile. A truck sitting in a driveway here is a working asset that has stopped working, whatever the size of the place it stopped in.
What we take out of a place like this is sleeper tractors and day cabs, dump trucks and roll-offs, box trucks and flatbeds, pickups and duallys, and the service and utility bodies that outlive the business that bought them.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Wheaton
Do you actually come to Barry County? Yes. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us.
Do you come out to a place this size? 427 people at 841 per square mile is a place we reach the same way we reach anywhere else. The truck decides whether we buy it, not the population.
How do you pay? We pay either cash or electronically.