The Schoharie Valley
A quarry, and a short list of bad crossings
The row attached to Schoharie is a crushed-stone operation MSHA records with 12 employees, 2.15 miles from the Census centroid of the village. It joins NYSDOT’s approved source register 0.55 miles away as a Heidelberg entry at Middleburgh, listed as a stonefill source, which means it is qualified to supply publicly funded work in that class.
Within ten miles of the quarry the 2025 National Bridge Inventory records 113 structures. Two are coded posted for load and two are coded below legal loads, and the nearest of those is 5.44 miles away. By the standards of a stone-hauling road that is a short list.
Who holds the bridge
But both of them belong to the county, and that is unusual
Both of the two restrictions here are county-maintained, which is not how it usually falls. The state maintains 43.2% of New York’s structures and counties 35.7%, with towns and municipalities holding the rest, so the county is one tier of four — and at most pits in this batch the restrictions land on some other tier entirely.
It matters because what a seller or a hauler can do about a posting depends on who put it there. A county posting, a town posting and a state posting are three different offices and three different conversations, and here there is only one of them to have.
The lowest rating that binds a working truck is 18.1 tonnes, about 20.0 US tons. Over the empty weight of a tandem dump that admits roughly 7.1 tonnes of stone — a part load rather than a full one, on the crossing that decides it.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, New York file; items 41, 64 and 70. Ratings are the gross weight of the rating vehicle, not a payload.
New York weight law
So the permit and the posting answer different questions
So it is worth being clear about which one is binding on any given day.
Vehicle and Traffic Law § 385 sets a maximum of 80,000 lb or less depending on axle spacing, and running above legal weight means a divisible load overweight permit from NYSDOT — written commodity-neutral, with no list of favoured industries in it. Stone is a divisible load by definition. Beneath the permit the state allows 22,400 lb on a single axle and 36,000 lb on two consecutive axles under eight feet, against federal figures of 20,000 lb and 34,000 lb, and federal limits govern the interstate system.
The permit raises what the state will let you carry. It does nothing at all to the rating on the bridge, and out here the bridge is usually the one that answers first.
N.Y. Veh. & Traf. Law § 385. Information, not legal advice.
New York paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Beyond the roads, the paperwork comes down to that one sentence.
Everything after it is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route. New York reaches its salvage brand by four separate routes and its seventy-five per cent repair-cost test applies only to a vehicle eight model years old or newer, so on an older truck it does not arise. Once applied the brand is permanent, and the DMV must examine a rebuilt vehicle for stolen parts before it can be registered or titled.
New York DMV, salvage and rebuilt-salvage titling. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
What we buy around Schoharie
Those rules cover all of it, and all of it is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the quarry. Farm trucks and grain hauls off the valley floor. Flatbeds, day cabs, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go out with a crew.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them, whether it works out of the quarry 2.15 miles from the village or never goes past the posted crossing 5.44 miles the other way.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Schoharie
- 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.
- The engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
- What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route.
- The truck cannot legally cross the bridge on my road loaded. Is that my problem to solve?No. If it is going on a tow it goes empty and it goes on our arrangement, so the rating on your road stops being the deciding factor.
- It is a farm truck, not a highway truck.That is fine and it is common here. Seasonal use and low road miles are an ordinary shape rather than a mark against it — with the quarry 2.15 miles one way and the nearest restricted crossing 5.44 miles the other, plenty of trucks around here never had a reason to go far.
Why people call
Beyond a truck that has finished its seasons in the valley, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring off the land. A business that changed shape. One truck too many after a contract ended. A truck that has spent its whole life between the quarry 2.15 miles out and the same two county bridges 5.44 miles the other way is worth no less for it.
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.
New York weight and title rules current as of August 2026 — verify with the New York DMV and NYSDOT before acting on them. Sources: New York Consolidated Laws, New York DMV, NYSDOT approved source register, FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, MSHA, the central node list.