We buy trucks in McConnells

The federal mine regulator records eleven employees at Lowrys Quarry, 3.64 miles from the town centroid. Within ten miles of that gate the bridge file records 97 structures, of which 16 are posted for load and 23 are coded below legal loads — 23.7%, close to one crossing in four.

Every single one of those twenty-three is state-maintained. Not one county bridge and not one city bridge appears in the set, which sounds like a verdict on the county and is not.

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

That absence has a plain cause. York County maintains three structures altogether and posts none of them, so there is almost no county tier here for anything to be wrong with.

It is why the count belongs beside the rate every time. Across this state the county tiers are wildly different sizes — York three, Chesterfield three, Richland fifteen, while Anderson maintains 133 and Spartanburg 170. A posting rate computed over three bridges and one computed over 170 look like the same kind of number and are not.

The crossing that actually sets the ceiling here is a state secondary road 9.02 miles out, rated 13.6 metric tonnes, about 15.0 US tons. Over the 11.0-tonne tare of an empty tandem dump that admits roughly 2.6 tonnes of stone. The lowest rating in the set is 7.8 tonnes, under that tare, so that one takes no commercial vehicle at all; the nearest restriction of any kind is 1.94 miles from the gate.

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

Those roads run towards a border, and that is where the record stops rather than continues. North Carolina has no rule file in this repository: its sites were surveyed and published and its road and title rules were never written down here.

A completed state is not the same thing as a documented one, and the same is true of several others. So for a load that crosses the line this page cannot state what applies on the far side, and it says so instead of guessing. No bridge file for that state has been read either, which means any structure count near the border is a bound rather than an answer.

For a seller none of it matters. It changes what a page is entitled to tell you about a route, and nothing about buying the truck — the 97 structures counted around the Lowrys Quarry gate stop at the line, so the crossing 9.02 miles out that sets the ceiling is the last one this file can actually see, and York County contributes none of them.

Those roads carry a loaded truck under one statute either way. 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.

§ 56-5-4160 carries a general ten per cent enforcement tolerance applying to those limits. Because the axle figures are printed as already including tolerance, the relief attaches to the gross and not to the axle.

Unprocessed forest products draw fifteen per cent instead, on non-interstate routes only. The axle-spacing relief in the same section 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 the state publishes a posted-bridge list at all.

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

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is that one sentence. Everything after it is a fix rather than a category: a lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route.

§ 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 York County 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. Stone out of the Lowrys Quarry gate 3.64 miles from the middle of town, and the roads north past the crossing 9.02 miles away, are where most 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.
• The truck is titled in North Carolina. Can you still buy it?Yes, it is an ordinary out-of-state sale. What this page will not do is tell you what that state’s own road and title rules say, because they were never written down here and we are not guessing at them.
• Do you come out here?Yes — the town, the Lowrys Quarry gate 3.64 miles out, and the roads north towards the line. 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 Lowrys Quarry gate 3.64 miles out, and on the state roads that carry it as far as the crossing 9.02 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.