Allegheny County
An intermodal ramp within a mile
What matters most here is a container ramp about nine-tenths of a mile off, which is closer than almost any borough in this lane gets to one. A petroleum port sits about 2 miles southeast and the Scully row about 2 miles beyond that.
The rail around it is dense and confusingly labelled. Five separate rows within about a mile and a half all render the Mckees Rocks name, in four different spellings, and they are not all the same yard.
A mile to the box, and the box goes far
That ramp is why the fleet here is long-legged rather than local. Drayage into a container ramp is short, but what leaves on the other side is going a very long way, and the tractors that feed it are chosen accordingly.
So this borough produces road tractors with high mileage and easy lives rather than beaten pit trucks. Between the Vermiculite Industrial Plant about 7 miles south and the Champion Refuse Disposal Area about 12 miles west-southwest, there is very little heavy extraction to change that.
Pennsylvania weight law
One general number, and a great many local ones
Those roads run under a single statutory ceiling. Under 75 Pa.C.S. § 4941 the maximum gross weight for a vehicle or combination on a Pennsylvania highway is 80,000 lb. The only allowance found in the section is 2,000 lb for vehicles fuelled primarily by compressed or liquefied natural gas or powered primarily by electric battery.
No commodity relief for stone, sand or natural resources was found in that section as consulted. That is not the same as establishing there is none — Pennsylvania runs a large permit apparatus under Title 67 — and it is written here as an open question rather than as an answer.
The penalty is a formula rather than a flat fine. A driver over the maximum or registered gross weight commits a summary offence and on conviction pays $75, plus $75 for each 500 lb or part of it beyond 3,000 lb over the limit. So the first 3,000 lb over is effectively a flat charge and everything past that climbs in steps.
75 Pa.C.S. § 4941; 67 Pa. Code ch. 189. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
Four spellings, one gate to find
It is that naming that causes more trouble here than any weight limit. A driver sent to the Mckees Rocks yard has several candidates within a mile and a half, and only one of them is the right gate.
The posted network applies as everywhere else: in Pennsylvania the binding weight on a lane is frequently a posted figure rather than the general one, with townships maintaining 3,198 structures against the counties’ 2,599. On a bank this narrow a plate near the Scully row closes the route rather than lengthening it, and the run south to the Vermiculite Industrial Plant, about 7 miles off, is the same.
Pennsylvania paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Beyond the weight rules, that is the whole of it in one sentence. Everything after it is a fix rather than a category. If the title is lost, there is a counter replacement. If the truck never had one, there is a bonded route. Both are ordinary and neither stops a sale.
Two Pennsylvania rules are worth knowing because they run the opposite way to most states. There is no fixed total-loss percentage in statute: under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1232 the test is whether repair cost plus salvage value equals or exceeds actual cash value. And PennDOT defines a salvage vehicle by comparing the cost of repairs to the value of the repaired vehicle — every other state on file compares it to the value before the damage.
The other one protects old equipment. The salvage definition does not include a vehicle that would qualify as antique or classic but for its lack of restoration or maintenance. So a truck old enough to be antique cannot be called salvage merely because nobody restored it.
75 Pa.C.S. § 1232; PennDOT salvage and reconstructed-vehicle definitions. Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
All of it, and highway tractors especially. Day cabs and road tractors off the ramp work. Tankers off the river terminals, box trucks and straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, service bodies and the pickups and work trucks around a gate.
Most of it works between the Mckees Rocks rows, the Scully row and the Vermiculite Industrial Plant.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
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 Avalon
- 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.
- It has close to a million miles on it.Around a ramp that is ordinary and the miles are the easy kind. It does not put us off.
- What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost has a counter replacement; a bonded route covers the rest.
- It is parked inside a rail gate.Then we need a contact and the right gate — around the Mckees Rocks rows that matters more than usual, because several of them share a name. The Scully row about 2 miles out is easier to find.
- Do you have to come out?Not always. We can buy it remotely and arrange the tow, come and drive it away, or take it if you bring it in.
Why people call
Beyond a drayage contract moving, the reasons are the familiar ones. A retirement. An owner-operator whose medical did not renew. One truck too many after a slow quarter.
Lots near the Scully row and out toward the Champion Refuse Disposal Area, about 12 miles west-southwest, hold a fair number.