On the state line
Eight people on the stone, and half the bridges in another state
Hinkle Contracting works the stone company here with eight people on it, and the state register carries it as approved aggregate producer 10700002, matched at 2.84 miles. That match sat outside the two-mile window this project first used and was recovered by widening the search while requiring the operator name and the town to agree — the same correction that rescued the Greeneville pit.
The geography is the story. Within ten miles of this pit the bridge inventory records 117 structures, and 56 of them are in the Kentucky file rather than the Tennessee one. The circle is computed from every state file with structures inside the radius, because a ten-mile circle drawn on a town this close to the line would otherwise describe half a road network.
Of those, 19 are coded posted for load and 15 coded below legal loads, 11 county-maintained, the nearest 3.00 miles out. The lowest raw rating is 4.7 metric tonnes. The lowest at or above the eleven-tonne commercial floor is 16.2 tonnes, about 17.9 US tons, set by a Tennessee structure 9.87 miles away — roughly 5.2 tonnes of stone over an empty tandem dump’s eleven.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Tennessee and Kentucky files, items 21, 41, 64 and 70. Operating rating is the gross weight of the rating vehicle.
Two weight regimes, a few miles apart, and both stop at the interstate
That line does more than split a bridge count. Tennessee grants a ten per cent margin of error on the weighing to eleven named trades and crushed stone is not among them. Kentucky, a few miles up the road, names crushed stone directly in a ten per cent axle tolerance of its own.
So the same loaded truck can be entitled to relief on one side of a sign and not on the other. And both regimes exclude the interstate: this project has now looked at eight states and found three granting relief to these commodities — Kentucky, Oklahoma and Tennessee — with all three excluding the interstate system, in states sharing no drafting history.
Which matters here, because Interstate 75 is the road. It climbs the Cumberland Mountain to the gap and crosses into Kentucky, and it is the obvious route in both directions. Taking the obvious route is exactly what forfeits the allowance — while the crossing that actually caps a load sits 9.87 miles out on the ordinary roads.
The corridor
A market that runs north and south along one road
Because of that gap, Campbell County’s roads are organised around a single corridor. Only 74 of the county’s bridges are county-maintained and six are posted, 8.1 per cent, ranking 52nd of the 92 comparable Tennessee counties — a thin network rather than a restricted one.
What that means for haulage is grade rather than crossings. Sustained climbs, sustained descents, and a market that runs north into Kentucky and south to Knoxville along one road, with the pit itself 1.27 miles from the middle of town.
In a machine from here, look at the brakes, the cooling system and the driveline before the odometer. A truck that spent its life on that grade has a different wear pattern from one that spent it on flat county roads, and the mileage will not tell you which you have.
Tennessee weight law
The margin of error, and why crossing into Kentucky changes it
On the Tennessee side of that gap, this is the statute a loaded truck runs under.
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, from a weights-and-measures chapter about certified public weighers rather than the motor vehicle code. Off the interstate again.
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. § 55-7-203 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
Past the weight rules the paperwork is one sentence: we need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one.
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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers off the Hinkle Contracting pit, and the plant trucks that go with an eight-person operation.
Day cabs, road tractors, box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups too — not a Campbell 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 Jellico
- 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.
- It worked both sides of the line.Expected here, where 56 of the 117 structures within 10 miles of the pit are in the Kentucky file rather than the Tennessee one, and the Cumberland Mountain corridor runs straight through it. Tell us where it actually ran; it does not complicate the sale.
- The brakes and the cooling have had it.That is the Cumberland Mountain grade rather than the machine. It is what we expect on a truck that worked this corridor, so tell us what has been replaced.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.
Why people call
Beyond a machine that has simply done its work, 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.
The yards around Campbell County, from the Hinkle Contracting pit up to the Kentucky line, usually have one standing that never got its next job.
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. That’s what we’re here for.