We buy trucks in East Spencer

A single record is filed here: a Norfolk Southern rail yard whose coordinate lies 1.14 miles from the East Spencer centroid, attached by nearest-centroid fallback rather than by sitting inside the place.

The row is named Salisbury. It is attached to East Spencer. Its coordinate falls inside Spencer town, which holds a page of its own on this site. Three signals, three different municipalities — and Salisbury, Spencer and East Spencer are three adjacent places, so none of the three is absurd.

It is the first row anywhere in this dataset where the name, the attachment and the containing place all point somewhere different. Ordinarily two of the three agree and the odd one out is the error. Here there is no majority to follow.

That row stays exactly as it is. Choosing between three adjacent towns on a hunch would turn an honest three-way disagreement into a confident error, and the node list is read-only to us in any case.

For anybody selling a truck it changes nothing, which is the useful part. A yard 1.14 miles from here is a yard 1.14 miles from here whichever municipality collects the rates on it, and what moves through it could not be determined from any source read for this batch.

Every one of those three towns loads under the same 80,000 lb ceiling, so nothing about the sale turns on it. There is no quarry filed to this town, so no ten-mile bridge count appears either. That is an absence in what we looked up rather than a fact about the roads, and no county figure would exist regardless: North Carolina maintains no county bridges at all.

So the things that actually govern a truck here are in the statute, and they apply the same in all three.

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 apply to every truck on the list, and the list runs a good deal longer than one yard 1.14 miles out. 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.
• Am I in Spencer, East Spencer or Salisbury?Our data cannot tell you — the one row here carries all three names in different fields, and its coordinate sits 1.14 miles out. Tell us the address and we will work from that rather than from a filing.
• 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, and every one of these towns loads under the same 80,000 lb ceiling.

Those two come up more than the rest, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with a yard 1.14 miles out, an 80,000 lb ceiling, or which of three adjacent towns owns the ground under 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.