Blount County
A Vulcan pit on the state register, two miles out
The row here is the Maryville Quarry, crushed limestone under Vulcan Construction Materials with 17 people on the federal mine record, 2.37 miles from the middle of the city. Seventeen is a substantial crew for a single pit in this state and it describes a working operation rather than a small one.
It also carries a state approval. The producer register lists it as approved aggregate producer 10500007, "Vulcan Materials - Maryville", matched to this coordinate at 0.14 miles. Only facilities on that register may supply a Tennessee highway project, so stone from here demonstrably goes into state road work.
Both of those point the same way. This is a pit with sustained haulage out of it, which means a standing local fleet of tandem dumps and aggregate trailers rather than occasional loads.
And the bridges around it read differently from the raw number
That haulage runs on a network the Federal Highway Administration has measured: within ten miles of the quarry its 2025 file records 152 structures, 8 posted for load and 3 of those county-maintained, the nearest 2.2 miles off.
The lowest rating among the 8 is 8.4 metric tonnes, and that number is misleading if you stop there. A structure rated at 8.4 tonnes will not take a commercial vehicle at all, not even an empty tandem dump, so it is not a cap on a load — it is a road a truck does not use. Seven of the 8 rate above the weight of an empty tandem, and the lowest of those seven, 17.2 metric tonnes or about 19.0 US tons, is the number that actually binds a loaded vehicle. It leaves room for roughly six tonnes of stone over the tare.
Across Blount County 4 of 59 county-maintained bridges are posted, 6.8 per cent. Tennessee flags more structures than its neighbours do, so the real count is lower.
The other two rows here are nothing like each other
Those two are a marble quarry and an airport, which makes this a county of three rows and three different trades. The Brown Quarry at Friendsville is run by the Tennessee Marble Company with 22 people and cuts dimension marble — block stone sawn to size, not crushed aggregate. McGhee Tyson Airport is filed at Alcoa.
Dimension stone is worth separating out because it moves differently. Block marble goes out on flatbeds and low-boys as a small number of very heavy single pieces, where crushed limestone goes out as tonnage in tandems. Same county, two different kinds of truck.
We buy both kinds, and the airport’s ground fleet as well when it comes up. The trade the truck worked in does not change what we do with it.
Tennessee weight law
The weight rules, and why crushed stone gets no margin
Whichever of those the truck was hauling, the weight rules are the same ones.
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
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
So the list is a broad one. Tandem dumps and aggregate haulers off the Vulcan Construction Materials pit, flatbeds and low-boys off the Brown Quarry at Friendsville, day cabs, road tractors, box trucks, straight trucks, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups.
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 Maryville
- 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.
- Do you buy in the surrounding county too?Yes. Blount County holds three filed operations — this quarry, the Brown Quarry under the Tennessee Marble Company and McGhee Tyson Airport at Alcoa — and we buy across all of it and beyond.
- It hauled block stone, so it has been overloaded its whole life.Heavy single-piece work shows in the frame and the suspension and we look there first. It is ordinary for the trade and it does not stop us buying the truck.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.
Why people call
Beyond the trades themselves, the reasons here are the ordinary ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract finishing and the truck that served it having nowhere to go next.
The yards between here and the Brown Quarry at Friendsville, and up towards McGhee Tyson Airport, 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.