We buy trucks in Shelby

The row filed here is the Broad River Mine, which reports 2 employees to MSHA and is carried as a surface operation working industrial sand, operator of record Glenn Forest Products.

That commodity matters more than the size of the crew. The rows we hold in this state fall into two groups that share nothing but a state line: mountain stone in the Blue Ridge counties, which moves palletised on flatbeds with a forklift at both ends, and sand on the coastal plain and in the Piedmont, which moves in end dumps and bulk trailers. They are different industries and they wear trucks differently.

What we do not have is throughput. Freight volume is not established for any of the thirteen rows in that group — no published tonnage, and no destination established for the sand rows either — so this page states none of it.

Those trailers are where a sand operation shows up in a used machine, and it is worth knowing what to look at.

Broad River Mine is one of the sand rows rather than one of the Blue Ridge stone rows, and the difference shows up in the trailer. Bulk sand runs with a liner, a tailgate seal and a hoist pivot doing the work, and those three are the wear items on this kind of haul rather than the engine or the box. A truck off a stone job and a truck off a sand job of the same age are not the same truck, and we will ask which it was.

One more thing follows from the commodity rather than from the machine. Industrial sand is substantially silica by design, so the federal rule that sets a respirable crystalline silica limit of 50 micrograms per cubic metre with an action level at 25 reaches this kind of operation more sharply than it reaches a stone quarry. No measured exposure at this site was found and none is claimed here; it is a property of the material and part of why a delivery driver gets site-specific training at every mine he enters.

The road rules are the state’s and they are the same for sand as for anything else, though one relief in them is worth reading closely.

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.

The ten per cent tolerance relieves the inner axle-group limits and nothing else, and it is unavailable in two places a hauler is most likely to need it: on bridges posted for load, and on the interstate system. For a dense commodity that is the relief most likely to matter, and it is withdrawn exactly where the load is tightest.

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.

One rule here belongs to the mine rather than to the truck. Federal training rules for sand, gravel and surface stone operations require site-specific hazard awareness training for over-the-road delivery drivers before work at each mine site, so a driver hauling to several pits carries several inductions. It is a condition of getting in the gate, not of selling the truck.

N.C.G.S. § 20-4.01 and § 20-71.3. Information, not legal advice.

All of that iron is iron we buy. End dumps and bulk trailers off the sand at Broad River Mine. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the stone. Day cabs and road tractors, 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 hauled sand, not stone. Does that change what you will look at?No, but it changes what we look at. Liner, tailgate seal and hoist pivot are the wear items on bulk sand work at somewhere like Broad River Mine, where a Blue Ridge stone hauler shows it in the body and the springs instead. Tell us which it did and we will ask the right questions.
• The trailer is tired but the tractor is not. Can you take both?Yes, and tell us plainly which is which. Complete is what matters — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts or wheels have been removed we cannot buy it. A worn liner is not that.
• 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 Broad River Mine, its two people or an 80,000 lb ceiling.

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.