We buy trucks in Middleport

This borough carries three entries: a stripping operation working hard coal with 1 person on the record, a coal breaker 1.36 miles out with 6, and a crushed-stone operation 1.30 miles away with 9. The nearest of the three sits 0.73 miles from the Census centre.

A borough of under half a square mile holding three separate industrial rows is unusual, and the payrolls tell you what kind of industry it is: one, six and nine. These are small operations, not works.

Beyond those three, the county record is overwhelmingly hard coal: 50 of its 58 rows are coal mines. This is the southern end of the anthracite region, where the coal has been worked since the 1820s.

The concentration nearby is remarkable and so is the scale. Within four miles there are five strip mines carrying two or three people each; the Wadesville workings 7.1 miles off carry 37, the Primrose operation at Mahanoy City 5.9 miles away 19, and the Pottsville Quarry 7.1 miles out 18. A great many one and two-person operations, and a handful of larger ones among them.

That shapes the trucks. An operation with two people runs a couple of trucks hard for a long time and replaces them one at a time, so the equipment here is older and better used than a fleet average would suggest.

Small operator or large, the ceiling is the same one. 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.

Beyond the pits, the road picture is better than the county’s age suggests. Within ten miles the National Bridge Inventory records 159 structures and 23 coded below legal loads — 6 county-maintained and 7 township-maintained — but the nearest of them is 3.91 miles away, which is a long way for a restriction to sit from three working sites.

The ratings are unusual too. The lowest among the restricted group is about seventeen US tons, and that is also the lowest that clears the commercial floor — so there is no crossing here in the band that admits no commercial vehicle at all. Every restricted crossing within ten miles takes a truck part loaded.

Across the county, 16 of the 60 bridges it maintains fail on load and 15 of its townships’ do, so the two tiers are close to even and a lane may answer to both.

Beyond the routing, the paperwork is short. 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. Tandem and tri-axle dumps, flatbeds and day cabs, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies and pickups.

A body that carried anthracite and later ran crushed stone is the ordinary history on this borough, with the breaker and the stone operation barely a mile apart. Between them and the Pottsville Quarry 7.1 miles off the runs are short and heavy, and the wear lands on springs and brakes.

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.
• There is coal dust through everything.Ordinary on a truck off the Tuscarora Breaker or the Pottsville Quarry 7.1 miles away. It does not count against the truck.
• It belonged to a one-man operation.Most of the coal rows in this county are exactly that. It makes no difference to how we buy it.
• 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.
• How are we paid?Cash or electronic payment, at pickup.

Where an operation carries one or two people, the truck is retired when the person is, and there is often nobody in the family who wants it.

Beyond that the work changes. A body set up for the stone operation here suits the strip pits badly, and between the Tuscarora Breaker 1.36 miles off and the Wadesville workings 7.1 miles away it is easier to change the work than the truck.