Kent County
The auto yard is south, everything else is north
This town sits between two different working areas and belongs to neither. To the south, about 6.1 miles out, is an auto load yard — a finished-vehicle facility, which means car-haul tractor-trailers rather than anything else — with the Davisville yard about 7.1 miles and a Guard training site about 7.3 miles south-west. The state airport is about 7.3 miles south.
To the north it is the port. The Global terminal is about 6.5 miles, the roll-on roll-off terminal about 6.6, Motiva about 6.7, the principal port about 6.8, a liquid bulk terminal about 6.8, Sprague about 7.5 and the petroleum port about 7.5 — seven facilities in one mile of each other, all of them north. A Guard site sits about 2.1 miles north of here, and the Cranston Quarry about 5.3 miles north-west with 23 people.
So the work here is two commutes, not one catchment
That split is unusual and it shows in the equipment. A truck based here is running either the car-haul work south or the tank and port work north, and the two use almost nothing in common. Six or seven miles each way is a short leg, which means a lot of starting, stopping and loading and very little steady running.
It also means a small radius covers a lot: the Portable 7 quarry about 8.2 miles north-west is at the outer edge of it, and nearly everything on this page sits inside about 8 miles of one point.
Rhode Island paperwork
Seventy-five, then eighty, then eighty-five
Those short-leg trucks are the ones most likely to meet the total-loss threshold, and this is the fastest-moving figure on any state file we hold. It ran at 75 per cent through 2025. H 6053 moved it to 80 per cent in 2025. S 3115, reported as chapter 286 of the 2026 public laws, moved it again to 85 per cent in 2026.
Three different correct answers in three years — 75%, then 80%, then 85%. It also lives in the insurance code rather than the vehicle code, which is why it moves on a different schedule from everything else. If you were quoted a percentage on this truck more than a year ago it is worth asking again, and that is as true of one parked by the Davisville yard 7 miles south as of one up at the Cranston Quarry.
H 6053 (2025); S 3115, chapter 286 of the 2026 public laws. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
Rhode Island emissions
And your truck is inside the emissions programme
The other rule that reaches these trucks is one almost no other state has. Under 280-RICR-30-15-2 a heavy-duty diesel vehicle — gross vehicle weight rating over 8,500 lb, model year 1990 and newer — is inspected at least annually and at the roadside, on an opacity measurement rather than a tailpipe chemistry test.
For model year 1991 and newer over 10,000 lb gross vehicle weight rating the peak smoke opacity may not exceed 40 per cent; older than that, 55 per cent. Every truck on this page is over 8,500 lb, so unlike almost everywhere else, this programme is about your equipment and not somebody’s car.
280-RICR-30-15-2, Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicle Emission Inspections. Information, not legal advice.
What we buy here
North and south run different iron, and whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change — we buy all of them. Car haulers and rollbacks off the auto load yard. Tankers on the terminal runs north. Day cabs and road tractors on the port work, dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Cranston Quarry, flatbeds, box trucks, service bodies and the pickups that follow the rest of it around.
Most of it works inside about 8 miles — the auto load yard and Davisville to the south, the port terminals to the north.
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 Warwick
- Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete, though — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. A missing bumper is fine. A missing driveline is not.
- I was told a percentage two years ago. Does it still hold?Probably not. The total-loss threshold here has moved twice in two consecutive sessions and the current figure is not the one from 2024. Tell us what you were told and when, and we will check it rather than repeat it.
- What if I can’t find the title?We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. If it’s lost, there’s a counter replacement. If there was never one to lose, there’s a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.
- There’s still money owed on it. Now what?That’s a payoff and a lien release, and it’s the slow part rather than the hard part. Tell us up front and we’ll work it into the paperwork.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever you would rather have.
- Do you actually come to Kent County?Yes. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us. The Davisville end of it is about 7 miles south and the port terminals about 7 miles north.
Why people call
Beyond the trucks themselves, the reasons repeat. A DOT physical didn’t go the way it used to. A car-haul contract that filled the week for nine years went to somebody else. The truck is just sitting behind a shop, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.
The lots around the Davisville yard 7 miles south, and up toward the Cranston Quarry 5.3 miles north-west, hold a fair number of trucks in exactly that position.
Most of those aren’t happy reasons, and we don’t treat them like they are. Somebody wants a straight answer and the truck gone by the end of the week. That’s what we’re here for.