We buy trucks in Elizabethville

The quarry named for this borough works broken stone with eleven people under New Enterprise Stone & Lime, and almost everything around it mines anthracite instead. Rausch Creek prepares coal with six people about 6 miles east at Lykens, and another Rausch Creek operation seven about 7 miles north-east.

The pattern holds outward. The Black Creek Breaker works two about 9 miles north, Calvin V Lenig two about 10 miles north, the Trevorton Strip eighteen about 12 miles north and the Trevorton Breaker two about 12 miles north.

Those are different businesses sharing a road network, not one industry. Coal here is prepared, washed and sized at small breakers; stone is blasted, crushed and graded at a quarry. The bodies, the loading and the customers differ at every step.

So an eleven-person quarry and a two-person washery both put trucks on the same lanes and neither buys the other’s. The Mandata Quarry works limestone with twenty-six about 6 miles north at Herndon, which is the one nearby operation in the same trade as this one.

Both trades 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.

Those lanes are sparse. Within ten miles the inventory records only a hundred and twenty-six structures — a far thinner network than the suburban counties carry, where the same circle holds three hundred or more.

Seven of them are below legal loads and the nearest is about 3 miles off. All seven are maintained by Dauphin County and none is on a township road, which is unusual in this state, where townships hold more local bridges than counties do, and it holds right across the 10 miles measured here.

So there is one authority to deal with here rather than several, and it is a long way between the crossings that matter.

Those crossings have no bearing on 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.

Both trades send us trucks. Tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers off the stone, coal trucks and breaker haulage, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every small operation keeps alongside its big truck.

Between the Mandata Quarry about 6 miles north and the Montandon Sand Plant about 13 miles north-east the stone side turns over on its own cycle, separately from anything the coal does.

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 hauled coal and stone in the same body.It happens on these lanes and it does not stop a sale. Just tell us, because the two leave different residues.
• We are a two-person outfit.Most of the operations around the Black Creek Breaker and Trevorton are that size. One truck is the normal sale here.
• 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.
• Can you reach a washery yard?Yes. Around the Rausch Creek operations and the Trevorton Strip it is routine — a gate and a contact is all we need.

A small washery or breaker stops and the truck that served it has no obvious second home. At two and three-person scale there is no fleet to absorb it.

Those sit between the Trevorton Breaker about 12 miles north and the Williamstown Mine about 11 miles east, on ground that no longer has any use for them.