We buy trucks in Herndon

The Mandata Quarry works limestone as a surface operation with 26 people under Meckley’s Limestone Products, and that is the largest workforce on any node within 15 miles of this borough. Everything else nearby of any size is anthracite.

The coal operations run much smaller. The Trevorton Strip about 9 miles north-east works with 18 people, and after that it drops away: the Trevorton Breaker with 2, the Calvin V Lenig operation about 5 miles north-east with 2, and a washery about 8 miles east with 2.

That difference in size comes with a difference in rhythm. A twenty-six person quarry runs a steady loadout; a two-person washery runs when there is material and stops when there is not, and the haulage each one buys reflects that.

So the trucks here divide into steady work and intermittent work. The Montandon Sand Plant about 6 miles north works sand and gravel with 8 people, which is a third pattern again, and the Elizabethville Quarry about 6 miles south works crushed stone with 11.

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.

Those small operations are the majority. The node list records nine coal rows within 11 miles of this borough and most of them work with four people or fewer — a slope about 11 miles east worked by Bear Gap Coal Company with 4, the Zerbe 10 mine east of that with 2, and a pit about 11 miles east with 1.

So one truck is frequently the entire haulage capacity of an operation. That is the scale this page is really about, and it is why a single sale matters here in a way it would not in a quarry district.

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 quarry and the coal workings 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 beside its big truck.

Between the Mandata Quarry here and the Trevorton Strip about 9 miles north-east the two sides turn over on separate cycles, and a body set up for limestone is not what a breaker is looking for.

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 is a coal truck, not a stone truck.That is a distinction worth telling us and it does not narrow anything. We buy both, and the two leave different residues.
• Can you collect from a quarry or a breaker?Yes. Around the Mandata Quarry and the Trevorton 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.Most of the coal rows within 11 miles of here are that size. One truck is the normal sale.

Those two-person operations are where the calls come from. A strip works out or a breaker stops, and the one truck that served it has no obvious second home.

So it stands between the Montandon Sand Plant about 6 miles north and the Elizabethville Quarry about 6 miles south, on ground that has no further use for it.