We buy trucks in Tyro

The only row attached here is a rail yard recorded as Spencer, operated by Norfolk Southern, whose coordinate lies 4.95 miles from the centroid of Tyro and reached this place by nearest-centroid fallback.

The naming around it is worth setting out rather than tidying away. There is a second row, named Salisbury, attached to East Spencer and sitting inside Spencer town, 6.51 miles from this one and under the same carrier. Between the two rows, the names, the attachments and the containing places name four different places. Which row is which facility was not determined, and we are not going to assert it.

What moves through the yard could not be determined either, so no commodity appears here. The coordinate is the mean of a track polyline’s vertices, as on all 2,459 rail-yard rows we hold, which fixes a yard rather than a gate.

That is the useful thing about them: they attach to the road and the truck rather than to the label on a row.

Gross weight in this state is capped at 80,000 lb and the tandem axle at 38,000 lb, which is four thousand pounds above the federal figure and above every other state we have read. On a dense load the tandem is the limb that binds, so the same gross ceiling means more here than it does across the line. The ten per cent tolerance under it reaches the inner axle-group table and nothing else, and the statute says so in terms.

There is also a class of road with rules of its own. North Carolina maintains light-traffic roads with their own limitations and exempts from them a vehicle carrying supplies, material or equipment necessary to a farming operation producing meat, crops, livestock or poultry by-products, where the destination of the vehicle and its load is solely on such a road. Which roads carry that designation was not determined, so no road-class figure is written here or for the yard 4.95 miles away.

Those are the ceilings in full, and what the tolerance does not reach is written into the same section.

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.

The six-year line decides one more thing: whether an inspection happens. A vehicle up to and including six model years old being retitled after damage goes through preliminary and final inspections by the Enforcement Section of the Division; one more than six model years old may be retitled without inspection. The seventy-five per cent test applies at every age either way.

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 through the county. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers. Box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go out with a crew, whatever the Norfolk Southern yard 4.95 miles away is loading.

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.
• That yard is not in Tyro, is it?No, and we would rather say so than dress it up. It is named for Spencer, it sits 4.95 miles away, and it was attached to this place because this was the nearest centroid. There is a second row 6.51 miles from it under the same carrier and we cannot tell you which is which facility.
• Do you know what the railroad handles?No. The commodities at that yard could not be determined from anything we read, and inventing a trade for a town is not something we will do. Your truck we can read directly.
• 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 yard 4.95 miles away 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.