We buy trucks in Jonesborough

One operation is filed under this town. Martin Marietta runs Locust Mount Quarry with five people on it, 6.32 miles from the middle of Jonesborough, and the state’s approved producer register puts it at the same coordinate our own list does — a match of 0.00 miles, which is as close as that check goes.

Five employees is a small site. It is also approved for state highway work, so what comes out of it goes onto public roads rather than only into private jobs.

The interesting number here is not the quarry. It is the roads.

That is what makes Jonesborough different from most of this state. Washington County posts 20 of its 105 county-maintained bridges — 19.0 per cent, against a statewide county-maintained rate of 12.9 per cent.

The pattern repeats close in. Within ten miles of the quarry there are 25 posted structures and 17 of them are county-maintained. So the restriction here is not on the through routes. It is on exactly the roads a small quarry uses to reach a small job.

The nearest is 2.2 miles out. The lowest raw rating is 6.5 metric tonnes, which is below the weight of an empty tandem dump and so not a crossing this trade uses at all.

FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Tennessee file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70. Tennessee codes item 41 more broadly than neighbouring states, so the true count of load restrictions is lower than the posted count suggests.

That last figure is the one people quote and it is the wrong one. The figure that limits a working truck is the lowest rating at or above the point where commercial vehicles exist at all, and here that is 11.3 metric tonnes, about 12.5 US tons.

An operating rating is the gross weight of the rating vehicle, and an empty tandem dump already weighs about eleven tonnes. So an 11.3-tonne cap admits roughly three tenths of a tonne of stone — against the twenty-five or so a legal 80,000 lb truck carries. In practice a route with that crossing on it takes a truck part loaded, or takes it empty.

Which means route knowledge, not payload, is most of what a Washington County driver is paid for. And a part-loaded route needs more trips to shift the same tonnage. You will know better than we do what that does to a machine over a few winters — but it is the reason we ask about hours and loading gear here before we ask about miles.

Those crossings sit on top of a statute that does not vary by county at all.

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 eleven named classes — logging, sand, coal, clay, shale, phosphate, solid waste, recovered materials, farm trucks and machinery trucks — off the interstate system only. Crushed stone is on none of those lists.

Two more matter more here than in a flat county. Under § 55-7-103 the department may set a lower maximum weight from January 15 to April 15, and at other times for weather or repairs, with a week’s notice posted at the termini of the road and every detour. And under § 55-7-104 an overweight vehicle may not be moved at all until the load is reduced into compliance or a permit obtained — failing to comply is itself a Class C misdemeanour. On a network like this one that stop is the expensive part.

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

Then the paperwork, which is a good deal simpler than the roads.

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 get wrong. Tennessee’s salvage and rebuilt part rests 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 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.

All of it, and on a small operation one truck usually does several jobs. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers off Locust Mount. Service bodies and work trucks, because five people on a site means nobody has a machine that only does one thing.

Flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks, rollbacks, day cabs, road tractors and pickups too — not a Washington County thing in particular, they run everywhere.

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.
• It has run part loads on posted county roads its whole life. Is that worse?Not worse, different. Easier on the driveline, harder on the hoist and the loading gear, and more trips than the tonnage suggests. Tell us about the body and the suspension.
• Can you get a truck out of here if the bridge is posted?Yes, and around Locust Mount in Washington County that comes up more than in most places. It is exactly the case where buying it where it stands and arranging the tow beats anyone driving it anywhere.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.

Beyond a truck that has simply done its winters, the reasons here are the small ones. Retiring with nobody taking the business on. A five-man operation going down to four machines. A truck bought for one contract that outlasted the contract.

The yards out around Locust Mount and the rest of Washington County turn the same trucks over, a few at a time.

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.