We buy trucks in Murphy

The row filed here is the Cherokee Co Quarry, with 10 employees on the MSHA record. Its coordinate lands 12.90 miles from the centroid of Murphy town, which is further out than all but four rows in this state, and we would rather say that plainly than let the page imply the pit is up the road.

Ten miles around it is three states. The circle holds 101 structures — 46 from Georgia, 30 from North Carolina and 25 from Tennessee — because this county is a wedge with the Georgia line to the south and the Tennessee line to the west. Of the 101, 13 are rated below legal loads and 9 of those are county-maintained, which can only be the neighbouring states, since North Carolina maintains no county bridges at all.

The nearest restricted crossing is 3.68 miles out. The tightest a loaded truck could use is about 16.0 US tons gross, set by a structure in Georgia 9.91 miles away, against forty for a legal 80,000 lb truck.

Those figures come from every state file that has structures inside the radius, and that choice changes the answer here more than anywhere else we have measured.

Counted on North Carolina’s own file alone, only 30 structures lie within ten miles — the thinnest network we have measured in this state, against 50 to 551 elsewhere in it — and the binding cap on that reading is 24.4 tonnes, one of the mildest in the far southwest. Counted across all three state files, the network is 101 structures and the binding cap is 14.5 tonnes, set across the Georgia line. Both are true; they are answers to different questions, and thirty is a small enough denominator that a couple of structures move the rate by whole points.

The band around it is the hardest routing environment in the state either way. The far southwest — Cherokee, Clay, Macon, Swain, Jackson and Haywood — runs 167 of 796 nearby structures below legal loads, 21.0%, and Harrison Aggregates, which holds this pit, holds four rows in our entire national list and all four are in these counties. A machine out of that fleet was specified for this network and no other.

Whichever file you count, the statute is the same one, 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 12.90 miles out. Day cabs and road tractors on the runs over either line. 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.
• Half its work was in Georgia or Tennessee. Does that complicate the sale?No. Where a truck worked has no bearing on the paperwork; the title does. The state lines show up on this page in the bridge count, where 46 of the 101 structures within ten miles are Georgia’s and 25 are Tennessee’s — measured around a pit that is itself 12.90 miles from the middle of town.
• Does somebody have to drive all the way out here?No, and out here that is usually the answer: 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 out to us works too.

Those two come up most, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with a pit 12.90 miles out or a crossing 3.68 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.