Cuyahoga County
The mine goes down 1,793 feet and then runs out under the lake
Cargill’s Cleveland mine at Whiskey Island reaches a depth of 1,793 feet, down a four-minute lift, and then extends horizontally under Lake Erie — which is only 56 feet deep there. The workings cover sixteen square miles beneath the lake, with the primary tunnel running four miles north of the lakefront. It produces three to four million tons a year.
Morton’s Fairport Harbor mine is 30 miles farther east along the same shore. Between them the two lift more than three million tons of rock salt a year for melting snow and ice on Ohio’s streets, roads and highways, and it supplies road salt across the Northeast and the Great Lakes.
The mine itself resolves 1.6 mi from downtown. Maple Heights is 6.8 mi from it, Fairport 25.2, Akron 31.0.
Six yards, and two of the carriers are not railroads in the ordinary sense
Beyond the salt, six rail-yard rows are attached to Cleveland. The 3rd St yard sits 0.49 miles from the centroid, Clark Ave at 0.73 and Von Willer at 1.34. Campbell is 1.35 miles out, Cleveland Steel Mill 1.36 and East 55th St 1.46.
Two of those six carry the Cleveland Works Railway as their carrier, which is an in-plant switching railroad rather than a common carrier — a yard that moves steel around a mill, not freight around the country. The carrier field mixes that category in with operating railroads, and the difference matters to anybody who has driven into one.
What any of the six handle could not be determined from the sources read, so this page does not say. Cuyahoga County is an E-Check county, which turns out not to reach a truck at all; that is further down.
Ohio weight law
One ceiling, a tyre rule, and a spring that behaves like a cliff
Beyond the local record, the rules that decide what a truck here could legally carry are Ohio rules, and they are the same in every county.
Ohio sets gross weight at 80,000 lb and limits tyres to 650 lb per inch of width — an equipment-based constraint most states do not write down at all. Non-interstate axle groups run up to 40,000 lb on two axles and 48,000 lb on three, by spacing.
Beyond the base numbers, the state grants a 7.5 per cent variance to surface mining trucks carrying minerals from the place of loading, and the same to farm, log, coal and solid-waste vehicles, under Ohio Rev. Code § 5577.043. It is void on the interstate system and on any road or bridge subject to reduced maximum weights, and that exclusion is written into the grant itself rather than left to a separate section.
That second exclusion is the one that bites. Under § 5577.07 the Director of Transportation may cut weights on state highways by up to 25 per cent and county commissioners may cut them on county roads by up to 50 per cent, with signs posted at least one day before at both ends and at intersections with principal roads. A truck carrying a qualifying commodity loses the variance and takes the reduction on the same day, which is how a vehicle legal at 86,000 lb in February ends up illegal at 40,000 lb in March on the same road.
None of that reaches an ordinary road tractor running under the base limit, which is most of what moves through a yard. It is here because one day’s notice is not much, and because a posted road is the sort of thing a seller remembers about a truck without knowing why it mattered.
Ohio Rev. Code § 5577.04 on base limits, § 5577.043 on the commodity variance and § 5577.07 on seasonal reductions. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
Ohio paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is one sentence.
Everything after that sentence 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.
One Ohio rule is worth knowing before anybody starts work, because it is about paperwork rather than metal. A rebuilt inspection here is carried out by the State Highway Patrol and covers proof of ownership, the motor number and the VIN — and the documentation or receipts for the materials used in the restoration, presented on the day, with titles or receipts for replaced major components carrying the source vehicle’s VIN.
A rebuild done without keeping the paperwork cannot be retitled in Ohio. Georgia checks the components; Ohio checks the receipts for them, at the counter, on the day. That is a thing to know before you start, not after.
And the brand is permanent. Every subsequent Ohio title bears REBUILT SALVAGE in black boldface on its face. Colorado stamps the vehicle instead, and Connecticut issues a clean-faced replacement — the same repaired truck, three different outcomes.
What Ohio does not have is a percentage. The central rule file records the threshold for becoming salvage as not determined and instructs that none be stated from it, and the section itself carries no numerical threshold, no valuation base and no age limit. The standard is that an insurer, a self-insured organisation, a rental or leasing company or a secured creditor declares the vehicle economically impractical to repair. The owner is not on that list. So no Ohio threshold is stated here.
Ohio Rev. Code § 4505.11. Information, not legal advice. Ohio has not adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which in any case is a manufacturer sales standard and asks nothing of an owner or an operator.
What we buy here
None of the above narrows what we will look at. Day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.
Box trucks and straight trucks are not an Ohio thing in particular — they are everywhere. They are on the list because we buy them here too.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them. Cuyahoga County work, the lakefront terminals and the mill roads are where most of it turns up, Whiskey Island included.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Cleveland
- 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 out 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. A rebuilt one is fine, and Ohio will have printed that on the face of it.
- Do you actually come out here?Yes. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us — whichever is easiest for you.
- How far out do you come?All of Cuyahoga County and the counties around it. Fairport Harbor, Maple Heights and Akron are all inside an easy run — Akron is 31.0 mi out. We drive it away, tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you bring it to us.
Why people call
Those reasons are the same everywhere and they are mostly personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck sitting behind a shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn 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.
Across Cuyahoga County, from Whiskey Island to the mill roads, the same trucks come up for sale for the same reasons.