We buy trucks in Marion

Woodlawn Quarry records 11 employees and sits 7.91 miles from the city centroid, working crushed stone. The other two rows are a different trade entirely. H&B Mine is a surface operation working dimension stone under H&B Stone, LLC, with 3 employees, and No 1 Mine is the same kind of operation under Appalachian Stone Company, with 7.

Those are not interchangeable. Crushed stone runs a plant and moves tonnage; dimension stone cuts block and moves fewer, heavier, more awkward loads. A truck that spent its life under one is not the same machine as a truck that spent it under the other, and the difference shows up in the trailer more than the tractor.

Appalachian Stone turns up twice in these mountains — here with seven people, and again at Boone with one. The same operator name across two rows does not mean the same operation, and the employee figures are the clue.

Those hauls run over a network with a trap in it. Within ten miles of Woodlawn Quarry the bridge inventory records 151 structures, of which 16 are rated below legal loads, the nearest 1.04 miles out. The lowest operating rating among them is 6.3 metric tonnes.

That 6.3 is not a limit anybody hauls to. A crossing rated that low is a farm bridge no commercial vehicle uses under any load, empty or otherwise. The figure that decides what a truck can carry is the lowest rating at or above the weight of an empty tandem, and here that is about 23.3 US tons — seventeen tonnes higher than the figure at the bottom of the list.

One more detail says something about the data rather than the road. Fifteen structures are coded as posted for load and sixteen are coded below legal loads, so the second number exceeds the first. Those are two independent codings rather than one being a subset of the other, which is why we quote the below-legal count and not the posted count.

Both readings sit under one statute, and it 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.

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.

The awkward part for anybody working out of McDowell County is where the tolerance stops. It is the relief most likely to help a dense load, and it is unavailable on posted bridges and unavailable on the interstate system — which is to say, on the crossings counted above and on the road out.

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 it is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off Woodlawn Quarry. Flatbeds and lowboys carrying cut block off the H&B Stone and Appalachian Stone Company mines. Day cabs and road tractors on the legs out. 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 pulled block off a dimension-stone mine. Different kind of truck to you?Not to whether we buy it. Heavy awkward loads on a lowboy put the wear in different places than tonnage work does, so we will ask what it pulled, and it is a question rather than a hurdle.
• Somebody quoted me a six-tonne bridge limit. Is my truck stuck?Almost certainly not. The lowest rating on a bridge list is usually a farm crossing no commercial vehicle uses at all. The one that matters near Woodlawn Quarry — whose nearest restricted crossing is 1.04 miles out — is about 23.3 US tons.

That second question comes up around Woodlawn Quarry, whose nearest restricted crossing is 1.04 miles out, more than in most places — and it is rarely the real reason for the call.

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 last contract, 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.