Warren County
A two-man pit, approved for state work, seven miles out
One row is filed in this whole county: a crushed-limestone quarry under Rogers Group with 2 people on the federal mine record, its coordinate 6.90 miles from the middle of the city. Two people is about as small as a filed operation gets, and seven miles is far enough out that it is a county pit rather than a town one.
Small does not mean unofficial. The state producer register carries it as approved aggregate producer 28900004, "Rogers Group - McMinnville Aggregate", matched at 0.66 miles — two thirds of a mile, close enough to be a coordinate match rather than a name match. Only listed facilities may supply a Tennessee highway project, so stone from this two-man pit goes into state road work.
That combination is the interesting one here. A crew of two and a place on the register describe an operation that loads for others to haul, which is why the trucks around it mostly belong to somebody else.
And those trucks meet more restrictions than most in this state
That is the part a hauler feels. Within ten miles of the quarry the Federal Highway Administration’s 2025 file records 88 structures and 13 are posted for load — 12 of them county-maintained, the nearest 1.0 miles off. Across Warren County as a whole 22 of 97 county-maintained bridges carry a posting, 22.7 per cent, against a statewide county-maintained rate of 12.9 per cent — 1,205 of 9,337. This county posts roughly one in four where the state posts one in eight.
The lowest rating among the 13 is 6.5 metric tonnes, which is below the weight of an empty tandem dump and therefore describes a road a loaded truck simply does not take. Twelve of the 13 rate above that line, and the lowest of those, 12.6 metric tonnes or about 13.9 US tons, is the cap that actually binds: roughly a tonne and a half of stone over the tare of an empty tandem, against the twenty-five a legal 80,000 lb truck carries.
Tennessee codes more bridges as posted than its neighbours do, so the true restriction share is lower than 22.7 per cent. The comparison with the state figure still holds, because every county in it is coded the same way.
Which is hard on a driveline, and shows up when you sell
Those numbers add up to a truck that runs part loaded a lot of the time, takes long ways round, and does more miles per tonne delivered than the same machine would 40 miles west on the Highland Rim. None of that is a defect. It is what the ground under Warren County does to a haulage business.
It does mean a truck from this county often has a history that reads oddly: high hours against modest tonnage, a driveline and a clutch that have worked harder than the odometer suggests, and brakes done more often than a highway fleet would need. We look at the machine rather than the paperwork, so that history is not held against it.
Tell us the hours if the meter still reads. On a truck that worked restricted roads they say considerably more than the miles do.
Tennessee weight law
The weight rules, and why crushed stone gets no margin
Whatever the bridges allow on the day, 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 Rogers Group pit and off the wider Warren County roads, day cabs, road tractors, box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, 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 McMinnville
- 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. Warren County holds one filed operation, the Rogers Group pit, and we buy far beyond it — across the whole county and out onto the Highland Rim.
- It has run part loaded on posted roads for years.That is the normal working life of a truck in this county. It is hard on a driveline and it is not a mark against the machine.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.
Why people call
Beyond the roads 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.
Small hauling outfits across Warren County and out onto the Highland Rim 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.