Loudon County
The lightest posted network in this part of the state
Three quarries sit under Greenback, which is a lot for a town this size. Martin Marietta holds the Greenback Quarry with fourteen people, though the state register files it under Lenoir City rather than under this town. Tri-County Crushed Stone carries nine, and the Loudon County Quarry carries two.
What sets the place apart is the road network, and it is the opposite of the usual story on these pages. Loudon County maintains 25 bridges and posts exactly one of them — 4.0 per cent, against a statewide county-maintained rate of 12.9. Twenty miles north-east, Knox County maintains 131.
Close in it is the same picture. Eight posted structures within ten miles of the Greenback Quarry, the nearest 4.9 miles out, and the cap that actually binds a loaded truck is 23.0 metric tonnes — about 25.4 US tons. At the Loudon County Quarry it is 24.3. Those are among the highest caps anywhere in this state.
Which means the odometer here means what it says
That matters more to a seller than it sounds. A cap in the twenties, against the eleven tonnes an empty tandem dump already weighs, leaves room for most of a load — so route was never really the constraint around Loudon County.
No detour history. No partial loads forced by a crossing. No years of running three quarters full because the short way had a posted bridge on it. A Greenback truck did the miles on its clock and carried what it was meant to carry while it did them.
Compare that with Cannon County, an hour and a half west, where a third of the county-maintained bridges are posted and a loaded truck plans its day around them. Same weight law, same rock, completely different life on the machine.
One thing to check
The register calls it Lenoir City. It is the same quarry
That Martin Marietta row is the one place the paperwork here can trip somebody up. The node list files it as the Greenback Quarry; TDOT’s approved producer register calls the same operation “Martin Marietta - Lenoir City”, matched by coordinate at 0.11 miles.
Both are right. It is one pit with two names on two registers, because Greenback and Lenoir City are both Loudon County towns and the two registers picked different ones.
If you are trying to trace what a truck actually did — a service history, a materials file, an approval record — searching one name will not find the other. That is the kind of thing that makes a genuine record look like a missing one.
Tennessee weight law
Eleven trades get a margin. Stone is not one of them
None of that easy road network changes what the code allows, which is nothing extra for this trade.
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.
Tenn. Code § 47-26-812 adds an axle-citation shield and five hundred pounds for a natural resources load, out of a weights-and-measures chapter rather than the motor vehicle one. Off the interstate as well.
And § 55-7-104 is the expensive one: an overweight vehicle may not be moved until the load is reduced into compliance or a permit obtained. Where the crossings are this open, the statute is the only thing rationing a load at all.
Tenn. Code Ann. § 55-7-203 and § 55-7-104, and Tenn. Code § 47-26-812, as summarised by the University of Tennessee County Technical Assistance Service. Information, not legal advice.
Tennessee paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Then the title, which is that sentence and two fixes after it.
A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither is unusual and neither stops a sale.
The salvage rule is the one that gets quoted 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, when 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 asserted 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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers off the Martin Marietta pit and the Tri-County Crushed Stone yard. County plant off the Loudon County Quarry end of it.
Day cabs, road tractors, box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups as well — not a Loudon County thing in particular, they run everywhere.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
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 Greenback
- 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.
- Its records say Lenoir City, not Greenback.That is the register calling the Martin Marietta pit by the other town’s name. Same quarry, 0.11 miles apart on the map. It is not a discrepancy.
- High mileage for a quarry truck. Suspicious?Not around Loudon County, where 1 of 25 county bridges is posted. Nothing here forced short loads, so the miles are real miles.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.
Why people call
Beyond a machine that has simply done its loads, the reasons here are ordinary ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract into Lenoir City ending and leaving a truck with nothing booked.
The yards around the Tri-County Crushed Stone end of Loudon County usually have one standing that stopped when the last job did.
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.