We buy trucks in Trenton

The federal mine regulator records ten employees at the Edgefield Quarry, 3.00 miles from the town centroid. Within ten miles of that gate the bridge file records 67 structures, of which 11 are posted for load and 16 are coded below legal loads. The nearest is 2.81 miles out.

Seven of those sixteen are county-maintained against nine the state’s — close to an even split, which is unusual in a state where the state highway department maintains 89 per cent of every structure and most county tiers are too small to register at all.

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

Those sixteen produce a ceiling of the sharpest kind. The lowest crossing a commercial vehicle can use in the circle is rated 11.0 metric tonnes, about 12.1 US tons, on a state secondary road 4.63 miles out in the next county over.

11.0 tonnes is exactly the tare weight of an empty tandem dump, so the crossing takes the truck and not one kilogram more: the payload is zero. The raw minimum in the set is 3.6 tonnes, so most of what is restricted here is closed to a commercial vehicle outright and the lowest one that opens, opens empty.

Nine structures in the whole state carry that exact rating — 0.8% of the restricted set against a median of 27.2 tonnes — and this circle holds one of them. That is a different fact from having no cap, and a different fact again from a bridge no truck can use at all.

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

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.

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, log trucks and timber rigs, 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 quarry 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 Edgefield Quarry gate 3.00 miles from the middle of town, worked around a crossing 4.63 miles out, is 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 part-loaded round county roads for years. Does that count against it?No, and it is worth telling us. Around here the county holds nearly half the restricted crossings, which means more detours and more low-speed work than a truck on a state route would see, and that lands in hours rather than in miles.
• Do you come out here?Yes — the town, the Edgefield Quarry gate 3.00 miles out, and the roads past the crossing 4.63 miles away in the next county. 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 shed since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Around the Edgefield Quarry gate 3.00 miles out, and on the county roads that run the 2.81 miles to the nearest posting and beyond, 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.