We buy trucks in Medford

The rail record here is one yard about 2 miles from the middle of town, and the aggregate is scattered around it rather than clustered. A Knife River operation is about 6.6 miles north-west with 17 people — the largest inside ten miles — with a Burl Brim quarry about 5.6 miles east with 2 and a Shot Rock portable plant about 6.6 miles south with 3.

North and west it continues at the same scale: Willow Creek Aggregate about 5.3 miles north-west with 7, a plant about 5.9 miles north with 4, Central Rock & Redi-Mix about 6.2 miles north-west with 8, a Rogue portable about 7.4 miles north-east with 5, and another about 9.7 miles north with 2. Eight aggregate operations inside 10 miles and only one of them employs more than ten.

Those eight are the whole of the close work. Beyond them the Freel Ranch Quarry is about 15 miles north with 6 people, a portable crusher near Grants Pass about 20 miles west with 7, and the Grants Pass yard about 22 miles west in Josephine County. Past that it is two- to five-person outfits.

That shape — ten small outfits inside twenty miles, none of them large — means the truck being sold here is usually one of two or three, and the person selling it knows it well. It also means that where the drive is long we frequently buy it remotely and arrange the tow rather than sending somebody, which is the honest answer on this valley rather than a brush-off.

Those long-serving trucks run into a totalled-vehicle rule that is unusually blunt about scope. Under ORS 801.527 a vehicle is totalled where the estimated cost to repair it is at least 80 per cent of its retail market value before the damage, measured against the retail values used by financial institutions in this state — and that limb applies where the damage is NOT covered by insurance. Two alternative limbs cover insurer declarations and unrecovered stolen vehicles.

The part worth reading twice is what the statute leaves out: it contains no carve-outs based on vehicle age, weight or class. Several other state files we hold put a commercial truck outside their salvage scheme entirely once it is over a weight or past a model-year window. This one does not. Your class-eight truck is inside the definition on the same terms as a car.

And the duty runs to the registered owner rather than to an insurer. Under ORS 819.012 the owner of a totalled vehicle must notify the department of its status — 30 days is the limit, and the section is titled for the penalty attached to not doing it.

ORS 801.527 and ORS 819.012. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

That same statute has a companion rule that follows from where this valley sits. That same state runs a title prohibition on older heavy-duty diesel engines — but only in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, up at the top of the state. Jackson County is nowhere near it.

So an engine old enough to be a problem in Portland is not a problem here, and anyone who has told you otherwise has taken a three-county rule for a statewide one. It is the kind of thing worth checking before accepting that a truck is unsellable.

Oregon HB 2007 (2019) — Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties only. Information, not legal advice.

The valley runs different iron, and whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change — we buy all of them. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Knife River and Willow Creek operations. Log trucks and timber rigs off the country west and north. Day cabs and road tractors on the yard work and the runs to Grants Pass, flatbeds, box trucks, service bodies and the pickups that follow the rest of it around.

Most of it works inside about 10 miles — the yard, the Knife River plant, Central Rock & Redi-Mix and the Rogue portable — then reaches out to Grants Pass at 22.

• Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete, though — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. A missing bumper is fine. A missing driveline is not.
• Do you actually come out this far?Where the drive is long we often do not need to — we buy it remotely and arrange the tow. We also come to you and drive it away, come to you and tow it, or you drive it to us. The Grants Pass end of it is about 22 miles west in Josephine County.
• What if I can’t find the title?We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. If it’s lost, there’s a counter replacement. If there was never one to lose, there’s a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.
• There’s still money owed on it. Now what?That’s a payoff and a lien release, and it’s the slow part rather than the hard part. Tell us up front and we’ll work it into the paperwork.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever you would rather have.
• Somebody said my class-eight is too heavy to be totalled. True here?No. This state’s totalled-vehicle definition has no carve-out for age, weight or class, so a heavy truck sits inside it on the same terms as a car. Tennessee, South Dakota and Wyoming do exclude commercial trucks by weight; this one does not.

Beyond the trucks themselves, the reasons repeat. A DOT physical didn’t go the way it used to. A quarry contract that filled the season for nine years went to somebody else. The truck is just sitting beside a shed, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

The lots around Central Rock & Redi-Mix and Willow Creek Aggregate, 5 to 6 miles north-west, hold a fair number of trucks in exactly that position — and so do the yards out toward the Freel Ranch Quarry 15 miles north.

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.