We buy trucks in Anderson

The federal mine regulator records nine employees at the quarry here, 6.40 miles from the town centroid. That is a small operation, and the road network around it is marked hard.

Within ten miles of the gate the bridge file records 186 structures, of which 36 are posted for load and 34 are coded below legal loads — 18.3 per cent, close to one crossing in five. The nearest of them is 0.52 miles from the gate.

Half a mile. Whatever route leaves that pit, it starts by working around something.

MSHA Mine Data Retrieval System; U.S. Census 2024 Gazetteer, South Carolina places.

Those thirty-four restrictions break down in a way that is unusual for this state: twenty of them are county-maintained. That is the largest county-maintained share of any restricted set in this lane — twenty of thirty-four — in a state where the state highway department maintains 89 per cent of every structure and most county tiers are too small to mean anything.

Anderson County maintains 133 bridges and posts 59 of them — 44.4 per cent. It is the third largest county tier in South Carolina and nearly half of it is posted. Set that against York County, which maintains three bridges and posts none: two counties in the same state where the question “is the county road the problem” has opposite answers.

The crossing that sets the ceiling here is a county road 9.31 miles out, rated 16.8 metric tonnes, about 18.5 US tons — roughly 5.8 tonnes of stone over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump. The raw minimum among the thirty-four is 3.9 tonnes, well under that tare, so most of what is restricted near this pit takes no commercial vehicle at all and the number that actually binds is the next one up.

FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, South Carolina file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70.

So the figure that limits a truck around this town is not in the statute. S.C. Code § 56-5-4140 sets a single axle at 20,000 pounds and two axles four to seven feet apart at 35,200, both written as including all enforcement tolerances, with 80,000 pounds gross on the interstate, and § 56-5-4160 adds a general ten per cent enforcement tolerance on top of those limits.

A truck legally grossing 80,000 pounds runs about 36.3 metric tonnes. The usable floor within ten miles of this gate is 16.8. The law is a long way from being what stops the load, and a page that recited the weight schedule without saying so would be describing the wrong problem.

For completeness: because the axle figures already include tolerance, the relief lands on the gross rather than the axle; unprocessed forest products draw fifteen per cent rather than ten, on non-interstate routes only; and the axle-spacing relief covers dump trucks, dump trailers, trucks carrying agricultural products, concrete mixing trucks, fuel oil trucks and line trucks at 20,000 pounds per axle plus scale tolerances.

What was not established: the general gross and axle schedule off the interstate, seasonal restrictions, and whether a posted-bridge list is published.

S.C. Code § 56-5-4140 and § 56-5-4160. Information, not legal advice.

That is the road; the paperwork is one sentence and two fixes. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.

§ 56-19-480 sets salvage at repair cost — parts and reasonable market charges for labour — reaching seventy-five per cent of the truck’s market value immediately before the damage, and makes salvage and total loss the same term with no age limb at all. § 56-19-485 brands the cause as well as the fact: salvage rebuilt, salvage flood rebuilt, or salvage fire rebuilt.

The rebuilt inspection is discretionary — the department may require one by the Highway Patrol rather than always requiring it — and the application asks for the source of the parts used and what they cost.

The lien clock and the lien release, plate return on a sale, and apportioned registration were not established for South Carolina, and nothing is written here about them.

S.C. Code § 56-19-480 and § 56-19-485. Information, not legal advice.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds and rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, box trucks and straight trucks, and the pickups and work trucks that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a county-road thing in particular — they are everywhere. They are on the list because we buy them here too.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them. Short stone runs out of a gate 6.40 miles from the middle of town, threading around a restriction 0.52 miles from the gate, are where a lot of it turns up.

• 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. Rust is not a disqualifier.
• The engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route.
• It has been detouring around posted bridges for years. Does that show on a truck?Usually in hours rather than miles, and sometimes in the brakes. Tell us the hours if you have them — a truck that ran long ways round at low speed has done more work than its odometer says.
• Do you come out here?Yes — the town, the quarry 6.40 miles out, and the county roads around it, starting with the restriction 0.52 miles from its gate. 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.

Those questions come up because the reasons for selling are mostly personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended. A truck sitting behind a shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around the quarry gate 6.40 miles out, and on the county roads that carry it past a restriction 0.52 miles away, the same trucks come up for sale for the same reasons.

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.