We buy trucks in Sneads Ferry

The single record filed against this place is Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, whose coordinate reverse-geocodes to Onslow County. That is nearly the whole of what our data holds on it.

Acreage, strength and mission were not established, and the row carries no freight information — no commodities, no traffic, no gate count. A base of that size plainly generates truck movements, and we are not going to describe them, because describing them would mean inventing them.

What this page can do instead is use the measurement that does exist for this county, which comes from a quarry row rather than from the base.

That row is the Onslow Quarry, filed under Richlands, and its ten-mile circle is one of the smaller ones we measure.

It holds 70 structures, of which 4 are rated below legal loads — 5.7% — with the nearest 1.36 miles from the gate. Across the state the same measure runs 15.0% in the mountains against 4.5% on the coastal plain, so this county sits at the open end of the range, and the caps out here are among the mildest in North Carolina.

That is one location rather than a county-wide survey, and this page will not pretend otherwise. It is measured, though, and it is a better floor to stand on than an impression of what the roads round a base must be like.

What governs a truck here is the state statute, and it governs every road in the county the same way.

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.

It carries 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 limitations within 150 miles of the point of origination.

And a shifting-load provision gives relief on certain violations where the single-axle weight does not exceed the posted limit by more than 2,500 lb, which is a recognition that a load can move in transit without anybody having overloaded anything.

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.

Some things were not established for this row and naming them beats implying otherwise: how a vehicle six model years old or newer is treated on the retitling side, seasonal restrictions, the posted-bridge list, the lien clock, plate return, apportioned registration and the emissions programme. What is established is that North Carolina has not adopted Advanced Clean Trucks.

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

All of that iron is iron we buy. Day cabs and road tractors off the runs up and down the coast. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers out of Onslow County. 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.
• Orders came through and the truck cannot come with me.Then the straightforward version is that we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, and you need not be there for any of it. If you would rather hand it over yourself we come to you and drive it away or come to you and tow it. We will not put a clock on it, because a promise we might miss is no use to somebody packing.
• Do you know the roads round here?At county level, and from a quarry row rather than from the base: 4 of the 70 structures within ten miles of the Onslow Quarry are rated below legal loads, the nearest 1.36 miles out. That is one location, not a survey, and it is the honest limit of what we can say.
• 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 thin row in Onslow County, a crossing 1.36 miles from a quarry gate down the road, 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.