We buy trucks in Dobbins Heights

A single record is filed here: a CSX Transportation rail yard whose coordinate lies 1.81 miles from the centroid, attached by nearest-centroid fallback rather than by sitting inside the place.

The row is named Hamlet, which is a separate town nearby rather than this one. That is common enough in this data — a yard usually takes the name of whichever place it was built to serve — and it is stated here because somebody searching the name will land next door.

What moves through it could not be determined from any source read for this batch. The coordinate is the mean of a track polyline’s vertices rather than a surveyed point, as all 2,459 rail-yard rows in our data are, so 1.81 miles locates a stretch of track and not a gate. The row also carries a 75 miles radius, a slice-wide constant flagged as estimated rather than a measurement of this yard’s catchment.

That leaves no ten-mile bridge count on this page, because those are computed around quarry nodes and there is no quarry filed here. It is a gap in what we looked up rather than a claim about the roads.

Nor would a county figure exist if there were one. North Carolina maintains no county bridges at all — the state took the county road systems over in the 1930s and never handed them back — so a ten-mile circle is the only local measure that exists anywhere in this state.

A yard 1.81 miles out under one carrier, a notional 75 miles of catchment nobody measured, a neighbouring town’s name on it, and no more than that. Padding it would not make this page any more use to somebody selling a truck.

So the things that do bear on a truck in Dobbins Heights are in the statute rather than in that row.

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.

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.

One provision is peculiar to this state and useful to know on a small road. North Carolina maintains a class of light-traffic roads with limitations of their own, and exempts from them a vehicle carrying supplies, material or equipment necessary to a farming operation producing meat, crops, livestock or poultry by-products, or a business harvesting or processing seafood, where the destination of the vehicle and its load is solely on such a road. Which roads carry that designation was not determined for this batch, so no road-class figure is written here.

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 apply to every truck on the list, and the list runs a great deal longer than one yard 1.81 miles up the road. Day cabs and road tractors. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers. 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, and every one of them loads under the same 80,000 lb ceiling.

• 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.
• Everyone calls that yard Hamlet. Am I on the right page?You are. The row 1.81 miles from here carries the Hamlet name and is filed to this town, and either address reaches us. Tell us where the truck sits and we will work from that rather than from a 75 miles radius somebody estimated.
• Small place, and you are not nearby. How does this work?Usually without a visit: we buy it remotely and arrange the tow. We also come to you and drive it away, or come to you and tow it, and you can bring it to us if that is easier.

That second question is the one small places ask first, and behind it the reasons have nothing to do with a yard 1.81 miles away, a notional 75 miles of catchment, or whose name is on 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.