We buy trucks in Swannanoa

The row filed here is the Grove Stone Quarry, and MSHA records 37 employees at it — one of the larger crews in this state, where the median row runs to fifteen. Its coordinate lands 0.23 miles from the centroid of the Swannanoa CDP, so the pit and the middle of the place are effectively the same spot.

The ten-mile circle around it holds 238 structures, a dense network for the mountains. 30 are coded posted for load and 34 are rated below legal loads, so 14.3% on the figure we report, with the nearest 1.93 miles from the gate.

The tightest crossing a loaded truck could use is rated about 21.9 US tons gross against forty for a legal 80,000 lb truck, which admits close to nine tonnes of stone over an empty tandem’s tare — twice the mountain median, on a network restricted about as often as the mountain average.

That pairing — the count of the mountains and a cap from further east — is why we publish the two separately.

Across the twenty Blue Ridge rows measured, 498 of 3,586 nearby structures are rated below legal loads, 13.9%, with a median cap admitting about 4.4 tonnes of stone; the Piedmont rows run 3.8% and admit about 8.9. This network sits at 14.3% on the first and about nine tonnes on the second, so it meets restrictions as often as the mountains do and loses about as little to them as the Piedmont does.

The work is still mountain work. The rock is the crystalline granite, gneiss, amphibolite and mica-schist of the Appalachian core, winter shuts the building season for months, and the hauls run on grades — so the hours came in bursts and brakes, cooling and driveline carry more of the wear than they would on the flat. Thirteen operators hold those twenty rows and most have one pit apiece, which makes the operator name worth asking about up here.

Neither measurement is in the statute, which sets one ceiling for the whole state and on the open road 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 a pit 0.23 miles from the middle of the place. Day cabs and road tractors on the runs down the valley. 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.
• Mountain truck, so it must be thrashed?Not necessarily, and the numbers here are gentler than the reputation. 34 of the 238 crossings within ten miles are rated below legal loads, but the tightest usable one still admits close to nine tonnes of stone, which is a Piedmont figure. Grades wear brakes and cooling; we ask about those first.
• The quarry is right here in the valley. Does that change anything for me?Only that our data is well anchored — 0.23 miles between the row and the middle of the place, with the nearest restricted crossing 1.93 miles beyond it. Where your truck is parked is where we look at it.
• 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 pit 0.23 miles away or a crossing 1.93 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.