We buy trucks in Blountville

The quarry filed under this town sits beside the regional airport and works 13 people. Martin Marietta holds the approved state source on it, entry 18200002, matched to the node by coordinate at 0.17 miles, so stone from here goes into state highway work.

What sets it apart from every other node in its batch is what surrounds it. Within ten miles the inventory records 338 structures — more than twelve times the twenty-seven around a plateau-escarpment node in the same batch, and the densest network of the twenty. The pit sits inside a triangle of three towns with the airport in the middle of it, so it is ringed by three towns’ worth of road rather than one.

For a truck that means high annual mileage on good roads with frequent short deliveries. That ages brakes, clutch and suspension on a duty cycle rather than on a load, which is a different wear pattern from the rural pits and reads differently on inspection.

That density comes with postings, and this is the clearest place in the state to see why the posting count cannot be taken at face value. Of the 338 structures, 28 are coded posted for load on item 41. Only 6 are coded below legal loads on the separate item 70. Four of those six are county-maintained, and the nearest posted crossing of any kind is 4.85 miles out.

Statewide those two fields disagree badly — 10.2% of Tennessee structures are coded posted while 4.7% are coded below legal loads, and only 42% of the first group is in the second. In four neighbouring states the two fields agree to within about a point. Here in one ten-mile circle you can watch the whole divergence happen: 28 against 6.

It changes the answer, not just the arithmetic. Read over all 28 postings the binding cap is 18.1 metric tonnes, about 20.0 US tons. Read over the 6 that item 70 also says cannot carry legal loads it is 20.7 tonnes, set by a structure 5.16 miles out. Either way the raw minimum of 7.5 tonnes is a red herring: it is below an empty tandem dump and no commercial vehicle crosses it at all.

FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025. This ten-mile circle spans a state line, so it is computed from every state file with structures inside it — 332 from Tennessee and 6 from Virginia.

Those last six structures are the ones worth pausing on. Six of the 338 are in the Virginia file, so a ten-mile radius drawn around this pit crosses a state line without leaving the delivery area.

We have not researched Virginia’s weight or titling rules and this page asserts nothing about them. What it can say is that the border here is a paperwork boundary a short haul crosses, which is not true of most places in this state. A fleet working out of this town may be running under two sets of rules in the same week.

The node itself sits 5.95 miles from the centroid of the census place it is filed under, and 0.17 miles from the register entry that names it, which is another way of saying the same thing: this is airport-and-corridor country rather than a town with a quarry at the end of it.

Those roads sit under a statute that hands this trade nothing extra, and the statute stops at the line.

Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-7-203 sets 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle and 34,000 lb on a tandem, with up to 550 lb more for emissions-reduction equipment. Subsection (b)(7) grants a ten per cent margin of error on the weighing to logging, sand, coal, clay, shale, phosphate, solid waste, recovered materials, farm trucks and machinery trucks — off the interstate system only. Crushed stone is absent, and so are limestone, aggregate and gravel.

§ 55-7-103 lets the department set a lower maximum between 15 January and 15 April, and at any other time for repairs, weather or recent construction, with a week’s notice posted at the termini of the road and at every detour.

And § 55-7-104 is the one that costs a working day: an overweight vehicle may not be moved until the load is reduced into compliance or a permit obtained, and failing to comply is itself a Class C misdemeanour.

Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 55-7-103, 55-7-104 and 55-7-203, as summarised by the University of Tennessee County Technical Assistance Service. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is one sentence.

Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither one stops a sale.

The salvage rule is the one people repeat wrongly. Tennessee’s salvage and rebuilt part is built on the term passenger motor vehicle, and § 55-3-201 defines that as a vehicle ten model years old or less which, if it is a light-duty truck or a multipurpose vehicle, is rated at not more than nine thousand pounds gross.

So the seventy-five per cent threshold does not reach a truck rated above nine thousand pounds at any age, and does not reach a vehicle of any kind over ten model years old. Those limbs describe the class the part governs rather than exceptions inside it. Whether some other provision reaches such a vehicle was not determined and is not claimed here.

Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-3-201 and § 55-3-211, with the Tennessee Department of Revenue’s guidance. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the day those were read.

Both of those cover every kind of iron we buy, and around a network of 338 structures that is a wide range. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers off the Martin Marietta pit, 0.17 miles from its own register entry. Day cabs and road tractors on the corridor work, including whatever has to reach past the nearest posted crossing 4.85 miles out.

Box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups too — not an airport thing in particular, they run everywhere around here.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• 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 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, and where none exists there is a bonded route.
• Very high miles for its age.Expected here. A truck ringed by 338 structures within ten miles does short deliveries all day, and the miles pile up without the tonnage doing the same. Brakes, clutch and suspension tell you more than the odometer does, and the nearest posted crossing is 4.85 miles away.
• It works into Virginia.Fine, and common: 6 of those 338 structures are in the Virginia file. We have not researched that state’s rules and are not going to state them, but crossing the line does not change whether we buy the truck. Nor does the 0.17 miles between the pit and its state register entry.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.

None of that is usually the reason. The reasons here are ordinary ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract finishing and the plant that served it having nowhere to go next.

In corridor work there is a version that belongs to it: a delivery round is lost, and a truck that was doing short runs across a network of 338 structures has nothing to do the next morning. The Martin Marietta pit 0.17 miles from its register entry carries on regardless.

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.