One row, one operator name, and very little else
The single row filed against this place is a liquid-bulk terminal carried under Kinder Morgan, one of two rows in this state under that name in our list. That is close to the whole of what our data establishes here.
What it does not establish is what moves through it, how far the terminal sits from the middle of the place, or whether the row reached this place by name or by nearest centroid — nine of the twenty-two rows under that operator are attached by nearest centroid, so the method is not a formality. The rail-yard rows in this lane carry distances from 0.2 to 7.4 miles; this one carries none.
So there is no ten-mile bridge count on this page and no commodity. Both are absences in what we looked up rather than statements about the place, and we would rather show you the shape of the gap than fill it in.
What can be said holds for every road in the state
That leaves the rules, which are written down and do apply here.
The first is who maintains the road. No county in North Carolina maintains a bridge: 92.4% of the structures in the federal inventory are state-maintained and none is county-maintained, because the state took over the county road systems in the 1930s and never gave them back. Of the state-maintained ones, 9.3% are rated below legal loads, so any posting near you here came from the state.
The second is what a truck may weigh, and this state is more generous than most on one figure of it. Gross is capped at 80,000 lb and the tandem axle at 38,000, four thousand pounds above what every other state we have read allows. On a dense load the tandem is the limb that binds, so the same 80,000 lb ceiling means more here than it does across the line. Statewide the two bridge codings agree closely as well: 9.5% of structures are coded posted for load and 9.8% are rated below legal loads.
North Carolina weight law
Thirty-eight thousand on a tandem, and a tolerance that stops at the axle
Those are the ceilings in full, and the tolerance under them reaches less far than people assume.
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.
North Carolina paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Day cabs and road tractors off the runs to the terminal the Kinder Morgan row names. Tankers, dump trucks and aggregate haulers. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, 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.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Silver Lake
- 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.
- Do you know the terminal here?We know the row exists and the operator name on it, and that is honestly all. What it handles was not determined, and neither was how far it sits from the middle of the place — where the rail-yard rows in this lane carry distances from 0.2 to 7.4 miles, the Kinder Morgan row carries none. We are not going to build a page on a guess about your local industry.
- It ran tanker work. Is that different for you?Only in what we ask. A tanker’s hours and its pump and plumbing tell you more than the odometer does, and complete still means complete — engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts and wheels all present.
- 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.
Why people call
Those come up most, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with a terminal row under Kinder Morgan 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.