We buy trucks in Harwick

The node filed here is a plant working common clay and shale, about half a mile from the centre. Within roughly 3 miles of it the list records three more and none of them is in the same trade: a coal refuse site about 2 miles south-west, a bulk terminal about 2 miles south-east, and the North Camp Run Mine about 3 miles north working bituminous coal at surface with 5 people.

So four operations, four materials, inside a circle three miles across. That is unusually tight even by the standards of the Allegheny valley.

Those coal rows are not producing mines in the ordinary sense. A refuse site and a five-person surface operation move material that has already been handled once, and the haulage is short, dirty and hard on a body in ways that a run from a quarry is not.

So the trucks here wear differently from the ones a stone district produces. The Harmar Refuse Site about 2 miles south-west and the North Camp Run Mine about 3 miles north are both of that kind, and the bulk terminal south-east of them is the one operation nearby handling liquid rather than solids.

Those operations 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 industry sits on top of a lot of track. The node list records six rail yards within 9 miles — the Verona yard about 4 miles south-west, West Tarentum about 4 miles north-east, the Bessemer yard about 5 miles south and three more beyond them.

So the loads have somewhere close to go, and the runs are short. Between the Etna yard about 9 miles south-west and the Pitcairn yard about 11 miles south there is most of what a truck based here would ever cover.

None of that changes the paperwork. Under 75 Pa.C.S. § 4702 Pennsylvania runs a system of annual safety inspection, and it reaches essentially every registered vehicle. So a truck that has been registered and driven in this state has been inspected every year, at a station, with a record — and a gap in that history is itself a fact about the truck.

The title side is the ordinary part. If the title is lost there is a counter replacement; if the truck never had one there is a bonded route. Neither stops a sale. There is no fixed total-loss percentage in statute either: under 75 Pa.C.S. § 1232 the test is whether repair cost plus salvage value equals or exceeds actual cash value.

Where a truck has been rebuilt, § 1165.1 requires an enhanced inspection that includes a structural inspection of the frame and structural components. On a heavy truck the frame is the vehicle — rails, crossmembers and the fifth-wheel mounting are where a hard life shows — so that record is worth having in hand.

75 Pa.C.S. § 4702; 75 Pa.C.S. § 1232; 67 Pa. Code § 1165.1. Information, not legal advice.

Both the clay side and the coal side send us trucks. Tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers, coal trucks and refuse haulage, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every small operation keeps beside its big truck.

Between the North Camp Run Mine about 3 miles north and the Verona yard about 4 miles south-west the work turns over on its own cycle, and a body that has carried refuse is a different proposition to one that has carried clean stone.

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 refuse, so it is filthy.That is expected here and it does not stop a sale. Tell us what it carried, because refuse and clay leave different residues.
• Can you collect from a plant or a yard?Yes. Around the North Camp Run Mine and the Verona yard 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 a five-person outfit.That is the size of the mine three miles north of here, and small operations are most of what we buy.

Those small operations are where the calls come from. A reclamation job finishes and there is nothing else for the truck locally, because the work is project-shaped rather than continuous.

So it stands between the Bessemer yard about 5 miles south and the Sharpsburg yard about 7 miles south-west, on ground that has no further use for it.