We buy trucks in Clearfield

Sixteen freight rows sit in this county. Thirteen of them are bituminous coal mines, two are rail yards and one is a sand and gravel operation. There is no other trade of any size in the record.

The two nearest this borough are a tipple carrying thirteen people under RES Coal, attached here by the source’s own town name rather than by a measured position, and a yard about a mile from the centre run by R. J. Corman Railroad Company. The tipple and the yard sit about 3 miles apart.

That distinction is worth drawing because a tipple is not a mine. It is where coal is loaded out, which means it is a destination for road vehicles rather than a place that digs. The trucks that serve one come in loaded from somewhere else and leave empty on the same road.

So the wear pattern here is a loaded leg and an empty leg over the same surface, several times a day, on county roads that were not built for it. Springs, frames and brakes go first, and the engine is frequently the soundest thing on the truck.

The Conrail Tipple and the yard about 3 miles from it are the near end of that traffic; the Hoover Job at Shiloh about 4 miles north is the other kind, a working face rather than a loading point.

Those loads run under one statewide number and a great many local ones. 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, coal 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.

Those thirteen coal rows vary in crew size more than in anything else. Within about twelve miles the Hoover Job at Shiloh carries twenty-eight people, RES Morrisdale thirty-seven, the Hoover operation’s neighbours at Frenchville twelve, Crown Prince at Houtzdale five, the Cunnard Tipple at Morrisdale two, and A W Long Coal Company at Hawk Run exactly one.

A one-man outfit and a thirty-seven-person one buy, run and dispose of trucks completely differently, and both are ordinary here. The single-truck owner is the person who most often calls us, because there is no fleet to absorb a machine that has stopped earning.

Not everything is coal. Russell Stone Products works dimension sandstone with twenty-four people about 10 miles south-west at Curwensville, on its own routes.

The paperwork is the same for one truck as for thirty. 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.

Coal haulers and tri-axle dumps, the tractors and trailers that feed a tipple, flatbeds and lowboys that moved plant between strips, plus rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every mine road carries.

Between the Crown Prince at Houtzdale about 10 miles south and the Cunnard Tipple at Morrisdale about 11 miles east, most of what we are offered has run loaded one way and empty back for years. That is the normal history of a truck in this county, and it is the truck we look at rather than the story.

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.
• The frame and springs are tired.On a truck that fed a tipple that is where it shows first. It is expected here and it does not stop a sale.
• I only have the one truck.That is who we hear from most in this county. One truck is a perfectly ordinary sale.
• 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 sitting up a mine road.Then buying it remotely and sending a tow is usually the easier route. Around the Hoover Job and out toward Hawk Run we do that often.

A strip finishes and the haulage that served it has nowhere to go. With thirteen coal rows in one county, something is always closing and something else opening.

The rest are the ordinary reasons. A retirement, an estate, a truck parked behind the house since the last contract with the insurance still running.

Those sit between the Long Coal Company at Hawk Run about 12 miles east and Russell Stone Products about 10 miles south-west, on ground nobody is in a hurry to clear.