We buy trucks in Hayesville

The row filed here is the Hayesville Quarry, 13 employees on the MSHA record, and its coordinate lands 4.07 miles from the centroid of Hayesville town.

Ten miles around it is not all one state. The circle holds 98 structures and 38 of them are in Georgia, so the count is built from every state file with structures inside the radius rather than from this state’s alone. Of the 98, 11 are rated below legal loads and one of those is county-maintained — which can only be the Georgia side, because North Carolina maintains no county bridges at all.

The nearest restricted crossing is 2.02 miles from the pit. The tightest one a loaded truck could use at all is rated about 15.8 US tons gross, set by a structure 8.62 miles out, against forty for a legal 80,000 lb truck — a crossing that takes a tandem with about three tonnes of stone on it rather than twenty-five.

Those figures put this corner at the wrong end of a gradient that runs the width of the state.

North Carolina’s restricted share falls from the Georgia line towards Raleigh in five measured bands. The far southwest — Cherokee, Clay, Macon, Swain, Jackson and Haywood — runs 167 of 796 nearby structures below legal loads, 21.0%, with a median cap admitting about 3.3 tonnes of stone. The crescent at the other end of the state runs 3.8% and admits about 8.9. That is a factor of five and a half inside one state and one statute.

Close by it is tighter still. Tubbmill Quarry in Macon County has 45 of 168 structures below legal loads, the nearest 0.43 miles from the pit, and a cap that admits about a tonne. At three of the four pits in this corner the first routing decision happens before the truck has changed gear, which makes partial loading the ordinary condition of the work here rather than an occasional one.

None of that changes the statute, which is written for the whole state and 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.

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 runs the opposite way from the states either side of it. For a vehicle up to and including six model years old the test is a straight seventy-five per cent. For one more than six model years old the same test applies, but the cost of replacing the air bag restraint system is left out of the repair figure — so the older truck gets the narrower basis and is branded less readily, where Missouri and Tennessee simply switch the rule off past a certain age.

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 the pit 4.07 miles out. Day cabs and road tractors on the runs out of the mountains. 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.
• It worked for an outfit with pits in three counties round here. Does that matter?Only as background. Harrison Aggregates holds four rows in our whole national list and all four are in this corner — Hayesville, Dillsboro, Tubbmill and Cherokee Co Quarry — so a machine out of that fleet was specified for a network restricted at 21.0% and for nothing else. We buy it the same either way.
• Does somebody have to drive out here for it?No, and out here that is usually the point. The ordinary version is that we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, with nobody making the trip. If you would rather see a person, we come to you and drive it away or come to you and tow it, and bringing it down to us works too.

Those two come up most, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with a pit 4.07 miles out or a crossing 2.02 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.