We buy trucks in Duryea

This is anthracite country and the record says something less expected about it. Thirty-five freight rows sit in this county: seventeen are anthracite coal, but nine are sand and gravel operations working crushed sandstone, and four more are crushed stone.

So thirteen of the thirty-five are stone rather than coal. The Pittston Quarry works sandstone with ten people about 4 miles south-west and the Laflin Quarry eleven about 4 miles south, both of them aggregate businesses on old coal ground.

Those pits share the roads with two things that have nothing to do with them. An intermodal ramp sits about 5 miles north at Taylor, and the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant about 8 miles north-east.

Containers, ordnance and aggregate want three different vehicles and keep three different schedules. A borough this size sitting inside all three radii sees more variety of truck than its population would suggest, and that is who ends up calling us.

All three kinds of traffic run under the same 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, 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.

Through that mixture runs a regional railroad rather than a national one. The yard attached to this borough is operated by the Reading Blue Mountain & Northern Railroad Commission and sits about a mile from the centre of the place, inside it rather than out on the edge.

The Taylor yard is about 6 miles north and Steamtown about 8 miles north-east, so the rail side is dense here too. What the yard handles was not established from any source read for it, which is worth stating plainly rather than guessing at.

Around it the coal continues at very small scale — the Kassa Breaker with five people about 4 miles south, the Loree operation with one about 10 miles south-west, the Laurel Breaker with six about 10 miles south.

None of that variety reaches the paperwork. 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 three of those send us vehicles. Tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers off the sandstone, coal trucks and breaker haulage, day cabs and container tractors off the ramp work, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, service bodies and work pickups.

Between the Wilkes Barre Materials quarry about 5 miles south-west and the Chase Quarry about 9 miles west, the aggregate side alone will supply most of what we are offered in a given month.

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 ran coal and later ran stone.On old anthracite ground turned over to aggregate that is a common history and it does not affect whether we buy it.
• Do you take container tractors?Yes. The ramp at Taylor about 5 miles north puts plenty of them in this area and they are ordinary to us.
• 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 behind a gate at a quarry.Around the Pittston Quarry and the Laflin Quarry that is routine. Give us the gate and a contact, or we buy it remotely and send the tow.

A small breaker or bank operation stops and its one or two trucks stop with it. Seventeen coal rows in a county mostly worked at that scale means it happens steadily.

Those stand between the Kassa Breaker about 4 miles south and the Laurel Breaker about 10 miles south, along with the usual retirements and estates.