Van Wert County
Four people, and a ten-mile circle that crosses into Indiana
MSHA records 4 employees at the Scott Quarry, worked under the Stoneco name and the only node attached to this village. It sits inside active industrial-minerals permit IM-0495, reported at 268.5 acres and approved in 1977, and its coordinates lie 3.52 miles from the Census Gazetteer centroid of Convoy.
The state line is about six miles west, which changes the arithmetic on everything that follows. Ohio’s surface-mining weight allowance stops at that line, and Indiana’s own limits were not researched for this file and are not stated either way.
It also changes how the bridges around here have to be counted, and that is the part worth a section of its own.
Three bands, and where a loaded truck stops being able to cross
That circle spans a state line, so it is computed from every state file with structures inside the radius rather than from the Ohio file alone. Within ten miles of the node the 2025 National Bridge Inventory records 245 structures — 229 from Ohio and 16 from Indiana. Nineteen are coded posted for load, nineteen are coded below legal loads, and seventeen of those are county-maintained. The nearest is 2.81 miles away.
The ratings are where it gets useful. The lowest among them is 9.7 metric tonnes. The lowest that sits at or above the 11.0-tonne commercial floor is 19.4 tonnes, about 21.4 US tons, set by a single Ohio structure 5.65 miles out. And the rating is the gross weight of the rating vehicle, not its payload — so a 19.4-tonne cap admits roughly 8.4 tonnes of stone on top of the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump.
Read as three bands it is plain enough. Below 11.0 tonnes no commercial vehicle crosses at all, empty or not. Between 11.0 and 36.3 tonnes it crosses only part loaded. At 36.3 tonnes and above a legal load goes over whole.
One caution, and it cuts the other way from the reassurance. That floor is a minimum inside a ten-mile circle, so it is an upper bound on what you can rely on: at 64.1% of the nodes measured this way, a tighter crossing lies somewhere between ten miles and twenty. The circle is a starting point, not a guarantee about the next county.
Ohio weight law
The allowance, and the day it disappears
Those crossings sit under a state rule that carries its own exception inside it — and, six miles from Indiana, one that stops at the line.
Ohio sets gross weight at 80,000 lb, limits tyres to 650 lb per inch of width, and allows non-interstate axle groups up to 40,000 lb on two axles and 48,000 lb on three by spacing. On top of that, Ohio Rev. Code § 5577.043 lets a surface mining truck carrying minerals from the place where they are loaded exceed those provisions by no more than 7.5 per cent. Farm, log, coal and solid-waste vehicles get their own 7.5 per cent under the neighbouring sections.
The exception is written into the grant itself. The allowance does not apply on the interstate system, and it does not apply on any highway, road or bridge subject to reduced maximum weights. Ohio does not leave that to a separate section the way most states do — it is in the same sentence that gives the allowance.
Then read that against the seasonal rule. Under § 5577.07 the Director of Transportation may reduce weights and speeds on state highways by up to 25 per cent, and county commissioners on county roads by up to 50 per cent, with schedules filed and signs posted at least one day beforehand at both ends of the stretch and at intersections with principal roads.
So the day a county posts a thaw restriction, a qualifying truck loses the allowance and takes the reduction at the same time. On a county road that reduction can be half. The rule file states the consequence exactly: a vehicle legal at 86,000 lb in February can be illegal at 40,000 lb in March, on the same road, with one day’s notice.
There is one more worth knowing. Everything over 66,000 lb entering or leaving a surface mining operation has to use the roads designated under the county and township sections, and the operator has to post a sign naming them. A first violation is a written warning placed on the permanent motor vehicle record — not a fine, a record. A second inside a year is a minor misdemeanour and a third a fourth-degree misdemeanour.
Ohio Rev. Code § 5577.04 on base limits, § 5577.043 on the surface-mining variance, § 5577.07 on seasonal reductions and § 5577.081 on designated roads. 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. Ohio checks the receipts for the components, at the counter, on the day, where other states check the components themselves. 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. The quarry 3.52 miles out, the county roads of Van Wert County around it, and the lanes running the six miles west to the line are where most of it turns up.
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 Convoy
- 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?Anywhere in Ohio and anywhere in the country, and a state line six miles west is not a boundary for us. Nineteen posted structures inside a ten-mile circle is a routing problem and it is ours; the nearest is 2.81 miles from the quarry, and Van Wert County is easy ground besides.
Why people call
That is the mechanical half of it. The reasons people actually pick up the phone are mostly not mechanical at all, and they are the same everywhere. 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. That’s what we’re here for.
Around a quarry with 268.5 acres of permit, four people on it and a ten-mile circle that reaches into another state, in Van Wert County, the same trucks come up for sale for the same reasons.