We buy trucks in Pittsboro

Two quarry rows are filed to Pittsboro and they sit at the same point in Chatham County, 4.46 miles from the town centroid, with ten-mile road figures identical to the decimal. Normally that means one place written down twice.

Here it does not, because the operators differ and so do the businesses. One row is held by Luck Stone Corporation, an aggregate producer carrying 22 rows in the national list, with 20 employees. The other is held by 3M Company, a diversified manufacturer, with 35.

An aggregate producer and a manufacturer sharing a coordinate is not a duplicate record. It is far more likely to be a plant and a quarry on one site, which is an ordinary arrangement and a useful one to know about before somebody assumes the trucks in and out are all doing the same job.

That site sits on the most generous crossing anywhere in this lane, and the third most generous of the 1,082 rows we have measured across twenty-three states. Within ten miles there are 127 structures, of which 6 are rated below legal loads, the nearest 2.36 miles out.

The figure that matters is the cap. The tightest crossing a commercial vehicle could use at all is rated 36.2 metric tonnes gross — and a legal 80,000 lb truck grosses 36.3. So the binding crossing near Pittsboro is one tenth of a tonne short of taking a full legal load whole.

Everywhere else in this state that figure cuts the load, sometimes by nine tenths. Here it does not, or as near as makes no difference. Of more than a thousand sites we have measured across the country, exactly one carries a higher floor. For a truck that means the road network is not what shaped it, and the hours and the duty cycle are the whole story.

That crossing sits 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.

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.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Luck Stone Corporation end of the site, 4.46 miles from town. Whatever runs in and out of the manufacturing end — box trucks, straight trucks, day cabs and road tractors. 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.

• 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 ran full loads its whole life and never had to part load. Unusual?Here, no. The tightest useful crossing within ten miles of the Chatham County site, 4.46 miles from town, is rated 36.2 tonnes against the 36.3 a legal truck grosses, so full loading is the normal condition rather than the exception. It is one of very few places in this state where that is true.
• Do you have to come out and look at 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 two come up more than the rest, and none of the reasons behind them is in the Chatham County road figures or the 2.36 miles to the nearest restricted crossing.

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.