We buy trucks in Cashiers

Whitewater Quarry records 14 employees and sits 5.31 miles from the centroid of the place our data names. Within ten miles of it the bridge inventory records 50 structures.

That is a very small number. Across the Piedmont batches the same circle holds anywhere from 119 to 551, and elsewhere in these mountains 139 to 344. Fifty is the thinnest we have counted in this state by a wide margin.

Part of the reason is that the circle is cut off. The South Carolina line runs about four miles south of the pit, so a sizeable share of the ten-mile radius falls in another state’s federal file and does not appear in this count at all. The figure is real; it is just not a complete picture of the ground.

Those 50 structures include 10 rated below legal loads, with the nearest 6.98 miles out, and a tightest useful crossing of about 15 US tons gross against forty for a legal 80,000 lb truck.

One in five restricted is a mountain rate and it is consistent with the Blue Ridge generally, where the crystalline Appalachian core carries small separated markets rather than one metropolitan area. But a rate computed on 50 structures moves a long way if two or three change, and a truncated circle makes it shakier still.

So we give the count and the caveat together. What is solid is that this is mountain routing on a short season, and that a machine working out of here gathered its hours in bursts with the wear landing in brakes, cooling and driveline ahead of the engine.

Those crossings sit under a statute that reaches exactly as far as the border four miles south.

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.

The ten per cent axle-group tolerance is also unavailable on posted bridges and on the interstate system, which in these counties is where a loaded truck spends much of its time.

Beyond that, the paperwork comes down to 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.

All of it is iron we buy, on either side of the line. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off Whitewater Quarry, 5.31 miles out. Flatbeds and lowboys shifting plant around the Blue Ridge. Day cabs and road tractors on the legs down the mountain. Box trucks, straight trucks, 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.

• 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.
• Half its work was over in South Carolina. Does that complicate the sale?No. We buy across the country, and with the line about four miles south of Whitewater Quarry, crossing it is ordinary here rather than unusual. It leaves nothing on the title.
• Are you coming up here for one truck?Often nobody needs to. We buy it remotely and arrange the tow, which is the usual answer this far up. We also come to you and drive it away, or come to you and tow it, and you can bring it down to us.

That last one gets asked more than any of the others up here, and behind it the reasons have nothing to do with Whitewater Quarry or a crossing 6.98 miles from it.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A season that ended and left one machine too many in the yard. Sometimes it is only that the truck has been parked since the ground froze, 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.