Allegheny County
One steel works, served by two railroads
The unusual fact here is not the number of rail rows but that two of them serve the same plant. The works sits at the doorstep of this borough and is carried twice in the node list, once under each of two different carriers — a plant large enough that one railroad was never going to be enough.
The rest of the cluster follows the river bend. The Duquesne Coal Dock is about eight-tenths of a mile off, Kenney about 1.2 miles, Monongahela Junction about 1.3 miles, and the Harmar Refuse Site about 10 miles north.
Two carriers means constant transfer
That double service is what generates the local truck work. Where two railroads reach one plant, freight moves between them by road as a matter of routine, and those movements are measured in hundreds of yards.
So the trucks here do enormous numbers of very short cycles. Between the Duquesne Coal Dock about eight-tenths of a mile away and Kenney about 1.2 miles off, a full day’s work barely registers on an odometer while putting a year on a clutch.
Pennsylvania weight law
One general number, and a great many local ones
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.
A bend in the river, and no way round it
It is the bend itself that removes any alternative to those lanes. The borough sits on the outside of it with hillside above, so a loaded truck has one road and a plated structure on it is a closure.
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 Monongahela Junction, about 1.3 miles off, or the Duquesne Coal Dock below it.
Pennsylvania paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Day cabs and road tractors doing plant transfer work. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies and the pickups and work trucks around a mill gate.
Most of it works between the Duquesne Coal Dock, Kenney and Monongahela Junction.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in North Braddock
- 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.
- Very low miles, very old.That is the standard pattern on this bend and it does not put us off. Hours matter far more than the odometer here.
- 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 plant fence.Then we need a gate and a contact. Around the Duquesne Coal Dock those sites have their own rules and we work to them.
- How far out do you come?All of this county and into Westmoreland County, Washington County and Fayette County.
Why people call
Beyond a mill schedule changing, the reasons are personal ones. A retirement. A back that has had enough of the valley. A hauling contract that went elsewhere.
Lots near Kenney and out toward the Harmar Refuse Site, about 10 miles north, hold a fair number.