We buy trucks in Morrisville

The row filed here is the Raleigh-Durham Quarry, with 24 employees on the MSHA record, and its coordinate lands 6.75 miles from the centroid of Morrisville town — far enough out that the pit is between places rather than in one.

The ten-mile circle around it holds 386 structures, the tenth densest of the 101 networks we have measured in this state, and 9 of them are rated below legal loads. That is 2.3%, which is the ninth most open of the same 101.

The nearest of the nine is 4.05 miles from the gate, and the tightest crossing a loaded truck could use is rated about 22.9 US tons gross against forty for a legal 80,000 lb truck — room for close to ten tonnes of stone over an empty tandem’s tare. So route choice here is a mild question and traffic is the sharp one.

That pattern holds across all eight of the rows we have researched around Raleigh, of which this is one.

They work the Piedmont’s crystalline granite, gneiss and diabase and the margins of the Durham Triassic basin, and each of them sits inside the beltway or within twenty miles of it, because the Research Triangle is the market. Three producers hold all eight — Martin Marietta three, Heidelberg Materials three and Wake Stone two — so a fleet machine from any of them was specified nationally rather than locally.

Across those eight the roads run 110 to 445 structures within ten miles, five to thirteen rated below legal loads, and binding caps between 16.3 and 26.3 tonnes, all under the 36.3 tonnes a legal 80,000 lb truck grosses. This row is the openest of the eight on the count, at 2.3% with its nearest soft crossing 4.05 miles out. What wears a machine here is therefore the duty cycle rather than the route: short repeated hauls in metropolitan traffic, with brakes, clutch, suspension and tyres ahead of the engine.

Those hauls run under one statute, and on the open road it is more generous 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 6.75 miles out. Day cabs and road tractors on the runs between the two cities. 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 sat in traffic more than it hauled. Does that hurt it?It points us at the right questions rather than lowering the ceiling. Idle hours, brakes, clutch and suspension are what metropolitan work uses up; the engine often has less on it than the odometer suggests. Tell us what has been replaced and we can read the rest.
• Nothing round here is posted. Is that unusual?For this state, yes and no. 9 of the 386 structures within ten miles of the pit are rated below legal loads and the nearest is 4.05 miles out, which is a Wake County figure; forty miles west the same circle would hold three times the share.
• 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.

Those come up most, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with a pit 6.75 miles out or a crossing 4.05 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.