We buy trucks in Lincoln

This borough sits directly on one of the largest coke operations in the country. Its yard is at the doorstep, the Connelly row about four-tenths of a mile off, Peters Creek about eight-tenths, and three more rows inside about a mile.

The chemical trade sits just past them. The Clairton Plant, carried as a sulphur operation, is about 3 miles out; Irvin Yards about 4 miles; and a Marathon Petroleum Corporation liquid bulk terminal about 4 miles southwest.

That concentration produces a truck whose life the odometer cannot describe. Runs measured in single miles between a coke battery, a rail row and a terminal mean hours of loading, idling and shunting for almost no distance.

So the wear is thermal and chemical as much as mechanical. Between Peters Creek about eight-tenths of a mile off and Irvin Yards about 4 miles away, the trucks come to us with sound drivelines under bodywork that coke and sulphur have taken apart.

Those roads run under a single 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.

No commodity relief for stone, sand 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.

It is the shape of the valley that removes the alternatives. Everything above the works is hillside, so a loaded truck has one route and a plated structure on it is a closure rather than a detour.

In Pennsylvania the binding weight on such a lane is usually a posted figure, and 3,198 of the state’s local structures are township-maintained against 2,599 county-maintained. A permit brings an excess-maintenance agreement and posted security before the first load moves toward the New Eagle Plant about 8 miles southwest.

Beyond the weight rules, that is the whole of it in one sentence. 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.

All of that iron is iron we buy, corroded bodywork included. Day cabs and road tractors doing transfer work. Tankers off the Marathon Petroleum Corporation runs. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, service bodies and the pickups and work trucks around a mill gate.

Most of it works between Peters Creek, Irvin Yards and the Clairton Plant.

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.
• The body is eaten through but it drives.Around the Clairton Plant and Irvin Yards that is what this work does, and it does not stop a sale.
• 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.
• It is inside the works fence.Then we need a gate and a contact. Around Peters Creek those sites have their own rules and we work to them.
• Do you have to come out?Not always. We can buy it remotely and arrange the tow, come and drive it away, or take it if you bring it in.

Beyond a battery going down for relining, the reasons are personal. A retirement. A back that has had enough of the valley. A hauling contract that moved elsewhere.

Lots near Irvin Yards and out toward the New Eagle Plant hold a fair number.