We buy trucks in Harrisville

The quarry that carries the name of this borough works limestone as a surface operation with 26 people under Allegheny Mineral Corp. The same company works two more inside 8 miles: the Murrinsville Plant about 4 miles east with 15 and the Slippery Rock pit about 8 miles south-west with 22.

That is 63 people across three pits under one operator, and it is the shape of the whole local stone trade. There is no second limestone company within 8 miles of here on the list.

Those three pits are limestone and nothing else. The sand and gravel south-west of here belongs to different companies: the Reese Road pit about 10 miles south-west works with 13 people and the Black Run pit about 10 miles south-west with 9, both under Three Rivers Aggregate, and the Cress Pit about 11 miles south-west with 23 under another name again.

So two trades sit side by side with almost no overlap of ownership between them. The Branchton Lime Plant about 5 miles south works lime, which is a third thing again and a third owner.

Those pits all run under one 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.

That statutory figure is often not the binding one. PennDOT posts limits on state-designated highways and local authorities post the rest, on the structural condition of the road, so the number that decides a lane is frequently a posted one. A permit to exceed a posted limit comes from the posting authority, and it carries an excess-maintenance obligation: the permittee accepts financial responsibility for restoration beyond normal maintenance caused by the over-weight vehicles.

There is a local-traffic exemption and it turns on origin and destination rather than on distance. Over-posted-weight local traffic may exceed posted limits where the vehicle is travelling to or from a destination on the posted highway itself, proved by a bill of lading or by company certification. The posting authority can switch it off where it determines a damage risk. So a truck delivering to an address on a posted road normally needs no permit, and the same truck passing through needs one.

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.

That ownership pattern decides where the traffic goes. The node list records eight nodes within 11 miles of this borough, and one of them is the Branchton yard about 6 miles south — the rail head the stone from these pits can reach.

So the lanes run short and south rather than out to a highway. The Scrubgrass fuel handling facility about 13 miles north-east works with 5 people and is the one coal operation anywhere near, at the far edge of that circle.

None of that changes the paperwork. Everything after that 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 the limestone and the sand and gravel send us trucks. Tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers off the pits, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every small operation keeps beside its big truck.

Between the Murrinsville Plant about 4 miles east and the Cress Pit about 11 miles south-west the work turns over on its own cycle, and a truck coming off a limestone contract is not automatically wanted on the sand side.

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 has only ever hauled limestone.That is most of the work here and it narrows nothing. A dump body that carried stone is bought the same as one that carried sand.
• Can you collect from a pit?Yes. Around the Murrinsville Plant and the Branchton Lime Plant it is routine — a gate and a contact is all we need.
• 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.
• We are an owner-operator.Most of what we buy around here is a single truck. One is the normal sale.

Those owner-operators are where the calls come from. When one company holds three of the pits, losing a haulage contract can mean losing the local market rather than one customer.

So the truck stands between the Reese Road pit about 10 miles south-west and the Black Run pit about 10 miles south-west, on ground that has no further use for it.