We buy trucks in Lenoir

Caldwell Quarry and a row called Greensboro Portable Plant 1 are both Martin Marietta operations in Caldwell County, and their road figures agree to the decimal — 154 structures within ten miles, 23 posted for load, 22 rated below legal loads, nearest restriction 0.93 and 0.92 miles out. They are the same place.

What differs is the crew. Caldwell Quarry records two employees and the portable plant records seventy, the largest crew on any row in this state. That is the usual portable-plant pattern turned inside out: normally the site registration carries the small number and the company carries the specification, and here the site carries two people while the plant registered onto it carries seventy.

The third row, recorded simply as Lenoir, sits 3.60 miles from the town centroid with 8 employees and its own slightly milder network — 144 structures, 18 below legal loads, nearest 3.41 miles out.

That name is the part to be careful with. Greensboro is ninety miles east in Guilford County, and the Martin Marietta plant carrying its name works here, in the mountains. The name records where the unit was commissioned or where its owning division sits, not where it has been working.

It is the fourth time we have met a portable unit named for somewhere other than its own coordinates, and for anybody buying or selling a machine it changes the reading completely. Equipment associated with that name worked a network where 14.3 per cent of the crossings within ten miles are rated below legal loads and the tightest useful one takes about 17 US tons. Greensboro’s own network is 1.7 per cent restricted with a considerably higher cap.

So a machine with that name on the paperwork did not do easy Piedmont miles. It did mountain miles, and the two are not interchangeable.

Those two figures are the whole difference between working in Caldwell County and working an hour east. Across the Blue Ridge sites we have measured, 13.9 per cent of the structures within ten miles are rated below legal loads, with a typical tightest-useful crossing around 17 US tons. Across the Piedmont sites it is 3.8 per cent, and the caps run higher.

So an operator here meets a restricted crossing roughly four times as often as one on the crescent, and each one admits about half as much. We report those as two measurements and do not multiply them into a single index, because how often a restriction actually falls on a route depends on where the loads go, and that is not in the data.

The working conditions follow from the same geography. Winter closes mountain construction for months, so a machine here gathered its hours in bursts rather than evenly. The hauls run on grades, which puts more of the wear into brakes, cooling and driveline than flat ground does — we have no gradient measurement for any of these sites and are not claiming one, only naming the country. And partial loading is a routine condition of the work here rather than an occasional one.

That last point runs straight into the statute, and not in the operator’s favour.

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.

Read those two paragraphs together and the shape is awkward. The ten per cent axle-group tolerance is the relief most likely to matter to a dense load, and it is unavailable on posted bridges and on the interstate system. The Blue Ridge counties are exactly where posted bridges are most likely, and the interstates are the roads out. So the tolerance is available on the mountain roads and withdrawn on the two things a mountain hauler most needs to use.

Beyond that, the paperwork comes down to 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 Caldwell Quarry and the Martin Marietta plant registered onto it. Flatbeds and lowboys moving plant between them. Day cabs and road tractors on the legs out to the interstate. Box trucks, straight trucks, 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.
• It has worked grades its whole life. Does that put you off?No. Brakes, cooling and driveline take more of the wear on mountain work than they do on flat ground, and on a Blue Ridge network 14.3 per cent restricted with the nearest limit 0.93 miles from the pit gate, that is the ordinary shape of a truck out of these counties rather than a defect. Tell us the hours if you have them.
• Are you really going to drive up here for one truck?It often does not need anybody to. We buy it remotely and arrange the tow, which is the usual way this far out. 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 last one gets asked more than any of the others in Caldwell County, and the reason behind it has nothing to do with Caldwell Quarry or a portable plant with the wrong name on it.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A season that ended and left one machine too many in the yard. Sometimes it is only that the truck has been parked since the ground froze, 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.