We buy trucks in Ingram

The row attached to this borough is a rail yard operated by the Ohio Central Railroad Company, and it was attached by falling back to the nearest centroid rather than by sitting inside the place. Its coordinate lies 1.42 miles from the Census centre of the borough.

Follow that coordinate and it lands inside the city of Pittsburgh, which has a page of its own on this site. The borough it is filed under covers well under half a square mile. None of that makes the yard less real; it means the yard is a neighbour rather than a resident, and this page says so rather than claiming it.

That yard is not on its own. Three more at McKees Rocks sit 1.8 to 2.1 miles off, two more filed to Bellevue and Avalon 2.3 miles out, and an intermodal ramp 2.0 miles away.

Further out but still close, Island Avenue is 3.2 miles off and the Rook yard the same distance at Green Tree. A liquid bulk terminal sits 1.0 mile away and a river port 2.5 miles.

Across the county the list carries 51 rows and 37 of them are rail yards. Whatever else moves here, it moves alongside track.

What goes by road out of all that runs under one 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.

Not all of it is rail. Two military installations sit 6.8 miles west at the airport, and a Vermiculite Industrial Plant 5.4 miles south at Dormont. Vermiculite is a light, bulky mineral — it fills a body long before it loads one — and it is the opposite cargo to the bulk liquids and coal that between them make up most of what is not rail on the Allegheny County list.

The Etna yard is 7.4 miles off on the other side of the rivers. That is a short distance on a map and a longer one in practice, because getting there means bridges, and in this state the authority that posts a bridge is often the township rather than the county.

So a truck working out of this borough is doing short, awkward, bridge-bound running rather than open miles. It wears differently from a truck that spends its life on a highway.

Beside all that, the paperwork is the straightforward part. 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.

The offer does not depend on which truck you have. Dumps, flatbeds and day cabs off the ramps, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies and pickups.

Drayage between a ramp and a gate is stop-start work. Between the ramp 2.0 miles off and Island Avenue 3.2 miles away the miles are short and the clutch, brakes and driveline take the weight of it, so a low odometer on a truck from here does not mean an easy life.

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 parked on a narrow street.Say so when you call. Around Island Avenue and Green Tree that is the usual situation and we plan the pickup around it.
• The odometer is low but it is worn out.Expected on drayage work. We look at the truck, not the number.
• 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.
• Do you have to come out to buy it?No. We can come and drive it away, come and tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you can bring it to us.

Those drayage contracts move. A truck spec’d for one ramp does not always suit the next, and between Island Avenue 3.2 miles off and the Etna yard 7.4 miles away there are enough of them for that to happen regularly.

The other half is space. On a borough of this size there is nowhere to keep a truck that has stopped earning, and that decides it faster than the mechanical condition does.