We buy trucks in Wilson

Wilson Quarry sits 2.63 miles from the city centroid, and it sits at or near the fall line — the seam where the Piedmont’s crystalline rock ends and the coastal plain’s sediments begin. East of that line the rock is under sediment, and there is not a single crushed-stone quarry in our list anywhere beyond it.

So this is close to the last place in North Carolina where stone comes out of the ground. Everything further east has to have it brought in, which means the loaded leg and the empty leg of a haul out of here are not the same length. How far those loads actually run is not something we have data for and we do not claim it; the geology, and an empty map to the east, are what is established.

The rail row is CSX, recorded simply as Wilson, 2.71 miles out and the only one attached to this city. What it handles could not be determined from any source read for this batch.

That quarry records two employees, which is a registration with the mine regulator rather than a workforce. It is one of a couple of dozen such rows we have met, and on its own it says nothing about what equipment is on the ground.

It does sit under one of the two international producers that hold most of the eastern rows in this state, and that is the part with a consequence. Where a national company runs a site, the specification behind the plant is set nationally, so a machine from here is comparable with one from another of that company’s sites in another state. The duty, though, is this site’s and nobody else’s. Nothing about the fleet is inferred from the employee count.

The third row filed to Wilson is an Army Reserve centre. Its acreage, strength and mission were not established, it is recorded as thin, and no freight claim is built on it here — unlike the pit 2.63 miles out, which at least tells us what it digs.

Those hauls run on a network that barely constrains them. Within ten miles of the quarry the bridge inventory records 186 structures, of which 12 are rated below legal loads — 6.5 per cent — with the nearest 3.32 miles out.

The tightest crossing a commercial vehicle could use at all is rated about 23.9 US tons gross. It is still a gross-weight rating and not a payload, and a legal 80,000 lb truck grosses forty, so even that crossing takes one only part loaded. How often it falls on a real route depends on where the loads go, and the data does not say.

None of those counts has a county figure in it, and that is not an omission. North Carolina maintains no county bridges at all — the state took over the county road systems in the 1930s and never handed them back — so a ten-mile count is the only local measure there is.

Those crossings sit under a statute more generous on the open road 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.

There is also 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 limits within 150 miles of the point of origination.

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 decides the process rather than the test. A vehicle up to and including six model years old goes through preliminary and final inspections by the Division’s Enforcement Section before it can be retitled. One more than six model years old may be retitled without inspection, and the cost of replacing the air bag restraint system is left out of the seventy-five per cent sum. The same repair bill therefore counts against a five-year-old truck and not against a seven-year-old one.

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 running east off Wilson Quarry. Day cabs and road tractors working the CSX yard 2.71 miles out. 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.

• 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.
• It runs long empty legs east and comes back loaded. Odd pattern?Not here. The pit 2.63 miles from the middle of town is about as far east as stone comes out of the ground in this state, and with the nearest restricted crossing 3.32 miles out there is little in the way of it, so one-way loading is the normal shape of the work rather than a sign of anything.
• Do you 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 two come up more than the rest in Wilson County, and behind them the reasons have nothing to do with the fall line, a pit 2.63 miles from town, or a restricted crossing 3.32 miles out.

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.