Two pits and a yard, and one of the pits is eleven miles out
Salem Stone records 13 employees and sits 6.98 miles from the city centroid. The rail row, recorded simply as High Point, runs under Norfolk Southern 3.63 miles out and is the only one attached to this city.
The third row is the one to look at twice. It records 15 employees and it is filed here at a distance of 11.46 miles — further out than all but six rows in this state that are still treated as belonging to their city. It is called East Forsyth.
That name points north-east, away from High Point, and a name is not a location. We are not going to reassign the row on the strength of what it is called, because the coordinate is what places it and the coordinate puts it eleven and a half miles out. It is on this page with the distance stated rather than filed quietly under the city and left to look local.
Both circles land on the same cap
Those two pits sit on networks of different sizes that come out at exactly the same constraint, which is not a coincidence so much as a feature of a continuous urban belt.
| Within ten miles of | Structures, restricted crossings, and the tightest useful cap |
|---|---|
| Salem Stone | 418 structures, 17 below legal loads, nearest 5.51 miles out; tightest useful cap about 18 US tons |
| East Forsyth | 342 structures, 14 below legal loads, nearest 2.00 miles out; tightest useful cap about 18 US tons |
Both come out around four per cent restricted, which is the ordinary rate along this belt. The caps are gross-weight ratings for the crossing rather than payload figures, and a legal 80,000 lb truck grosses forty US tons, so a crossing rated at eighteen takes one only part loaded. How often such a crossing falls on a route anybody actually drives depends on where the loads go, and that is not in the data.
What is in the data is the traffic. These pits sit inside the metropolitan area they supply rather than out in the country, and the market builds all year rather than in a season. So a machine here gathered its hours evenly, and the wear lands in brakes, clutch, suspension and tyres before it reaches the engine.
North Carolina weight law
Thirty-eight thousand on a tandem, and a tolerance that stops at the axle
Those crossings sit under a statute 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.
North Carolina paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off Salem Stone and the East Forsyth pit. Day cabs and road tractors working the Norfolk Southern yard 3.63 miles out. 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.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in High Point
- 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.
- I am out past the city limits, nearer Salem Stone than the centre. Still your patch?Yes. We buy across the state and the rest of the country, and where a truck sits has never decided whether we are interested in it — Salem Stone is 6.98 miles out and that is still town as far as we are concerned.
- Does somebody have to come out and look?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.
Why people call
Those two come up more than the rest, and none of the reasons behind them has anything to do with Salem Stone or a yard 3.63 miles out.
Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A lease 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.