We buy trucks in Hegins

Two nodes are filed under this township and they are in different trades. One is a coal preparation operation working anthracite with 8 people; the other is the Summit Quarry about 6 miles east, working crushed stone with 9 — and the company that runs the quarry is an anthracite company by name.

That is the detail worth keeping. In this valley the stone business and the coal business are not always separate firms, and a truck sold by one may have spent its life working for the other.

Those two sit in the middle of a dense coal field. The node list records eleven coal rows within 10 miles of here and every one works anthracite — the Williamstown Mine about 3 miles south-east with 6 people underground, the Markson Bank about 4 miles east with 7, and the Black Creek Breaker about 4 miles north-west with 2.

So the operations are many and small. The Rausch Creek workings east and south-west run 4 to 7 people apiece, the Nova Coal operation about 8 miles east works with 5, and a pit about 10 miles north works with 1.

Those workings 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.

Those names describe different jobs and different trucks. A breaker sizes coal, a washery cleans it, a bank and a strip dig it, and an underground slope brings it out of the hill — and what each one loads out is a different product at a different stage.

So a truck here may never have been near a working face. Between the Rausch Creek preparation plant about 8 miles north-west and the slope about 10 miles north there is a whole chain of handling, and haulage exists at every link of it.

None of that reaches 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 coal side and the stone side send us trucks. Coal trucks and breaker haulage, tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers off the quarry, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every small operation keeps beside its big truck.

Between the Summit Quarry about 6 miles east and the Williamstown Mine about 3 miles south-east the two trades turn over separately, even where the same company stands behind both.

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.That happens here more than most places, because some of the same firms work both. Just tell us, since the two leave different residues.
• Can you collect from a washery?Yes. Around the Markson Bank and the Black Creek Breaker 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 two-person outfit.Several of the operations within 10 miles of here are that size. One truck is the normal sale.

Those two and four-person operations are where the calls come from. A bank works out or a washery stops taking material, and the truck that served it has no obvious second home.

So it stands between the Nova Coal operation about 8 miles east and the Big Mountain pit about 10 miles north, on ground that has no further use for it.