We buy trucks in Walnut Cove

The only row attached here is the Belews Creek Plant rail yard, operated by Norfolk Southern, whose coordinate lies 4.24 miles from the centroid and reached this place by nearest-centroid fallback.

The name is on two rows in our list. The other is 186.4 miles away, attached to Plymouth in Martin County and carried under a different railroad. The Belews Creek generating station is here, so at that separation and under two carriers the pair cannot be one facility — which means the far row carries a name that does not belong to its location, and what that location actually is was not determined.

We put that up rather than quietly picking one, because the same-name pair was found by accident: every duplicate check we run caps the distance between four and twenty-five miles, and 186 miles falls outside all of them. What moves through the yard here could not be determined either, so no commodity is named on this page.

That is the row; the roads are measured statewide and they hold here as anywhere.

The federal inventory codes a structure two ways, posted for load on one field and below legal loads on another, and in this state they agree more closely than in any of the nine we hold: 9.5% of structures carry the first and 9.8% the second, with almost every member of the first group in the second. Elsewhere that agreement runs as low as 42%. So round here the two questions — is it posted, will it take a legal load — have very nearly the same answer.

The weight ceilings are written down with the same care. Gross is capped at 80,000 lb and the tandem axle at 38,000 lb, four thousand pounds above the federal figure, and the ten per cent tolerance under it reaches the inner axle-group table and nothing else — not the single axle, not the tandem, not the gross, and not by administrative grant.

That is the statute a truck here works under, and on the open road it 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.

Several things were not settled for this row and we would rather name them: bridge postings, light-traffic road designations, seasonal restrictions, the lien clock, plate return and notice of transfer, apportioned registration and the emissions programme. None is established as absent. 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 plant runs. 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, wherever the yard 4.24 miles away sends them.

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.
• Do you know what the plant yard handles?No. The commodities there could not be determined from anything we read for the batch, and we are not going to invent a trade for the town. What we can tell you is where the row sits, 4.24 miles from the middle of it, and that a second row 186.4 miles away carries the same name and is not the same place.
• The truck is posted off one route and legal on another. Which counts?Both, and in this state they mostly agree: 9.5% of structures are coded posted for load and 9.8% are rated below legal loads, the closest agreement of the nine states we hold. We use the second figure because it is about what a crossing will actually carry.
• 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 4.24 miles away or a second row 186.4 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.