We buy trucks in Cooleemee

Woodleaf Quarry records 14 employees and sits 3.50 miles from the town centroid. The road figures around it pull in two directions at once, and that is the whole of this page.

The cap first. The tightest crossing a commercial vehicle could use at all is rated 11.7 metric tonnes gross, about 12.9 US tons. An empty tandem weighs around 11.0, so that crossing admits roughly seven tenths of a tonne of stone. It is the second tightest figure published anywhere in this state.

Now the count. Only 4 of the 119 structures within ten miles are rated below legal loads — 3.4 per cent, which is Piedmont-mild — and the nearest of them is 8.24 miles from the pit. That is the greatest distance between a quarry and its closest restricted crossing measured anywhere in North Carolina.

Those two readings together say something a single figure would hide. The binding crossing near Woodleaf Quarry is brutal and it is 8.24 miles from the work.

Somewhere else in this lane a cap like that would define the job — a pit with a twelve-ton crossing a mile from the gate has to plan every load around it. Here a driver can work all week and never approach the thing, because 8.24 miles is a long way in the direction of a bridge nobody needs.

So the honest reading is a mild network with one severe spot on the edge of it. Which is why we quote both figures rather than the worse one: a page that led with twelve tons would tell a seller their truck had spent its life crawling, and it had not.

Both readings sit under one statute, and it is more generous on the open road than any other we hold on file.

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.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off Woodleaf Quarry, 3.50 miles out. Day cabs and road tractors on the runs beyond. 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.

• 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.
• Somebody told me there is a twelve-ton bridge round here. Is my truck stuck?Almost certainly not. That crossing is real and it is 8.24 miles from Woodleaf Quarry, which is further from its pit than any other restricted structure we have measured in this state. Four crossings in 119 are restricted at all.
• Does somebody have to come out to 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 — the pit is 3.50 miles from the middle of town if that helps.

Those two come up more than the rest, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with Woodleaf Quarry or a crossing 8.24 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.