We buy trucks in Benson

A single quarry row is filed to Benson, and it is the only row in this state whose location we cannot settle by any method we have.

Usually one field is wrong and the others agree. Here the row is filed to Johnston County and names Benson, which is genuinely in Johnston County — so the city and the county corroborate each other. And the coordinate lands in Cumberland County, 32.20 miles away, disagreeing with both.

All five of the routes we use to resolve a row fail on it. The coordinate is not shared with another row. The name does not point anywhere useful. The city agrees with the county rather than with the coordinate, which is the opposite of every other defect in this state, where the coordinate and county agreed and the city label alone was wrong.

That leaves this page in an unusual position: there are real measurements attached to the row, and we cannot tell you with confidence which ground they describe.

The figures themselves are good ones. The pit records 16 employees. Within ten miles of its coordinate the bridge inventory records 273 structures, of which only 5 are rated below legal loads — 1.8 per cent, the fifth mildest share of any row in this state, the nearest 1.51 miles out, with the tightest useful crossing rated about 25.9 US tons.

What we will not do is write that as Benson’s road network, because 32.20 miles is far enough that it may describe somewhere else entirely. A page that presented it as local would be telling a seller something about their own roads that nobody has established.

Those doubts stop at the statute. It applies identically in Johnston County and in Cumberland County and on every road between them.

N.C.G.S. section 20-118 sets 20,000 lb on a single axle and 38,000 lb on a tandem, with gross weight varying by axle-group distance up to 80,000 lb. The tandem figure is the one to notice. Every other state we have read carries 34,000 lb there, so North Carolina allows four thousand pounds more on a tandem than Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, Ohio or Pennsylvania. On a dense load that is the limb that binds, which makes an identical 80,000 lb ceiling mean more here than it does elsewhere.

The same section grants a ten per cent tolerance on axle-group weights, and then writes down exactly what the tolerance does not reach: not the single-axle limit, not the tandem limit, not the 80,000 lb gross, not a posted bridge, and not the interstate system. It adds that no tolerance on those axle figures shall be granted administratively or otherwise. So it attaches to the axle-group table and to nothing else.

There is also an agricultural exemption with a distance on it. A vehicle carrying agriculture, dairy or crop products from a farm or holding facility to a processing plant, feed mill or market is outside the weight limits within 150 miles of the point of origination.

N.C.G.S. § 20-118. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the statute was last read for this batch.

Beyond the weight table, 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. Both are ordinary, and neither stops a sale.

Two North Carolina rules are drafted differently enough from the rest to matter here. The state brands a vehicle salvage where the cost of repairs, parts and labour, exceeds seventy-five per cent of its fair retail market value — and it applies that test whether or not an insurer has declared a total loss. Several states make an insurer’s decision a route into the definition. North Carolina writes the insurer out of it.

The second is a six-year line, and it decides the process rather than the test. A vehicle up to and including six model years old goes through preliminary and final inspections by the Division’s Enforcement Section before it can be retitled. One more than six model years old may be retitled without inspection, and the cost of replacing the air bag restraint system is left out of the seventy-five per cent sum. The same repair bill therefore counts against a five-year-old truck and not against a seven-year-old one.

N.C.G.S. § 20-4.01 and § 20-71.3. Information, not legal advice.

Those rules cover everything on the list, and the list does not depend on resolving a coordinate 32.20 miles from the town it names. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers. Day cabs and road tractors. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, 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, anywhere in Johnston County and well beyond it.

• 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 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. Neither stops a sale.
• Are you the people who think the quarry is 32 miles away?Our data does, and we are not defending it — the row names Benson in Johnston County and its coordinate sits 32.20 miles off in Cumberland County, and nobody has settled which is right. It changes nothing about buying your truck.
• Do you have to come out and look at it?No. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, or we buy it remotely and arrange the tow with nobody visiting. Driving it to us is also fine.

Those two come up more than the rest, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with a coordinate 32.20 miles out or a crossing 1.51 miles from it.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and left one machine too many in the yard. Sometimes the truck is simply sitting, and 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.