We buy trucks in Winston-Salem

Six rail-yard rows are attached to Winston-Salem, more than any other city in this state. Four run under Norfolk Southern — North Winston 2.72 miles from the centroid, Winston-Salem East at 2.77, Winston-Salem East Trans at 2.86 and Daisey at 6.30. Two run under CSX Transportation: Ingredion Winston Salem at 5.15 miles and a row recorded only as Wss at 5.70.

The one quarry, North Quarry, sits 5.13 miles out and records 21 employees. It is Piedmont crystalline rock, on the same urban belt that runs down through Greensboro to Charlotte, which means a market that builds all year rather than in a season.

What moves through any of those yards could not be determined from any source read for this batch. Six rows is a lot of rail for one city and it is tempting to read something into it. We are not going to.

Two of those rows sit 0.10 miles apart — about 530 feet — under the same carrier, and one name is the other with an abbreviation tacked on the end. That is close enough and similar enough to be one facility written down twice, but the suffix is a truncated descriptor rather than a carrier tag or a facility number, and our rule for duplicate pairs does not cover that shape. So it stays open rather than being closed by a rule stretched past its evidence.

The Daisey row has a different problem. It is filed to Winston-Salem and its coordinate lies inside Walkertown, which has a page of its own. There is a second row named Daisey Auto Lot, filed to Walkertown, 0.28 miles away under the same carrier. So of the two, the one filed under Winston-Salem is the one that is actually in Walkertown, and the pair have been swapped relative to their own places.

None of that changes what a truck is doing on the ground. It is set out because the counts on this page are only as good as the rows behind them, and a page that presents six rows as six yards is making a claim the data does not carry.

Those rows sit on a network the bridge inventory has measured properly. Within ten miles of North Quarry there are 371 structures, 19 posted for load and 18 rated below legal loads, with the nearest restricted crossing 3.09 miles out.

The tightest crossing a commercial vehicle could use at all is rated about 18 US tons gross. Those caps are gross-weight ratings for the crossing rather than payload figures, and a legal 80,000 lb truck grosses forty US tons, so a crossing at that rating takes it only part loaded. How often such a crossing falls on a route anybody actually drives depends on where the loads go, and the data does not say.

Eighteen restricted crossings in 371 is about one in twenty, which is the ordinary rate along this belt and roughly a quarter of the rate in the mountain counties an hour and a half west. Combined with city traffic, the wear here lands in brakes, clutch, suspension and tyres before it reaches the engine.

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. Day cabs and road tractors working the Norfolk Southern and CSX yard ends. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off North Quarry, 5.13 miles out. Box trucks and straight trucks on the delivery end of the same runs. 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 is a city truck with hard hours and low miles. Still interested?Yes. Short repeated runs and a lot of stop-start put the wear into brakes, clutch and suspension long before the engine, and queue time never reaches the odometer. Tell us the hours if the machine tracks them.
• I am out toward Walkertown. Still your patch?Yes. We buy across the state and the rest of the country, and it does not have to be a visit — we buy remotely and arrange the tow when that is the sensible way round.

Those two come up more than the rest, and the reasons behind them have nothing to do with North Quarry 5.13 miles out, or with which of six rows is really a yard.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A lease that ended and left one tractor too many in the yard. Sometimes the truck is just 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.