We buy trucks in Conway

Five rail yards sit inside about a mile of each other here, which is not a coincidence of geography. Aliquippa is in the town, and the Conway River Terminal, Blacks Run, Conway Yard and Conway itself are all within roughly a mile. Poor Farm is about 5 miles out.

The industry around them is lighter than the Mon Valley’s. Aliquippa Mine works gypsum about 5 miles away, the Beaver Falls plant handles perlite about 8 miles northwest, and a vermiculite plant run by JP Austin Associates is about 9 miles off. The Air Reserve Station at Pittsburgh airport is about 11 miles south.

That concentration makes this a drayage town more than a hauling town. The work is pulling boxes and trailers between yards, terminals and nearby plants — short, constant, and almost entirely stop-and-start.

So the wear pattern is clutches, brakes and cooling systems rather than the long steady miles a highway tractor sees. It also means the trucks are often older than a long-haul fleet’s, because nobody needs a new one to move a box four miles.

Blacks Run and Poor Farm are about a mile and 5 miles out, and a yard tractor can work both for a decade without seeing a highway.

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.

Those four-mile lanes cross the Ohio and its tributaries repeatedly, so structure is unavoidable. In Pennsylvania the binding number on a lane is frequently a posted one rather than the general 80,000-pound limit, and the local owners post on the structural condition of the road.

It has a practical edge for a yard operator. Where the destination is on the posted road itself, the local-traffic exemption can apply and no permit or bond is needed; where the truck is only passing over, all of it is needed. The test is origin and destination rather than distance.

Blacks Run and Poor Farm lanes cross the water repeatedly, and Beaver County owns rather less of that structure than its townships do.

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.

All of that fleet is fleet we buy. Day cabs and road tractors doing yard work. Box trucks and straight trucks, dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, service bodies, and the pickups and work trucks around them.

Most of it works between Blacks Run, Poor Farm and the Beaver Falls plants.

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.
• It’s an old yard tractor. Any good to you?Yes. Yard tractors and day cabs that have never left a terminal are a normal thing for us to buy.
• What about paperwork?We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; a bonded route covers the rest.
• Can you collect from inside the yard?Usually. Railroad property has its own access rules, so give us a contact and we’ll work around them.
• How far out do you come?Beaver County, Allegheny County and Lawrence County, and further when it suits. Distance is not the obstacle.

Beyond a contract ending, the reasons repeat everywhere. Somebody retiring. A small operator down to one truck and no work for it. An estate that needs settling and a truck nobody wants to deal with.

The yards around Blacks Run and out toward Lawrence County hold their share.

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.