Cocke County
Four quarries inside eight miles, and one belongs to the county
Four quarries sit under Newport and three of them are within two miles of the middle of town. The Hommel Concrete Co. Quarry carries nine people, the Smith Quarry seven, the Newport Quarry three under Vulcan Materials, and the Clear Creek Quarry two.
The Smith Quarry is the interesting one on paper. The nearest approved producer to it belongs to a different company, and no producer under its own operator name lies within five miles — so no state approval is claimed for it here. Four of the nine such cases in this state are county highway department quarries sitting next to a commercial one, and that is what this looks like.
Which is not an oddity so much as geology. County quarries sit beside commercial quarries because the rock is where the rock is.
The road network
The first restriction is four tenths of a mile from the gate
Those pits open onto a county network that starts restricting almost immediately. From the Clear Creek Quarry the nearest posted structure is 0.4 miles away — four tenths of a mile, which is not far enough to get a loaded truck up to speed.
Across the county, 13 of 106 county-maintained bridges are posted, 12.3 per cent, and 8 of the 13 postings within ten miles of Clear Creek are county-maintained. The pattern is the same one as the county figure: the highways are fine, the roads to the highways are the problem.
And the caps here are tight. At Clear Creek the binding one is 11.0 metric tonnes exactly, which is about what an empty tandem dump weighs before anything goes in it. At Hommel it is 12.0, and at Newport and Smith it is 15.2. So on the tightest of them a loaded truck does not cross, and on the others it crosses part loaded — a difference of a few tonnes on the rating, and a completely different day’s work.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Tennessee file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70. Operating rating is the gross weight of the rating vehicle, so a cap admits roughly itself less the eleven tonnes an empty tandem already weighs.
So route knowledge is most of what the job is
That is the part a mileage figure never captures. Where the crossings sit this close and this low, a Cocke County driver out of the Clear Creek Quarry spends the day choosing roads rather than driving them, and the tonnage that actually moves depends on which way round the county the load goes.
Part loads mean more trips for the same stone. More trips mean more loading cycles, more gear changes, more brake applications, and hours that climb faster than miles do. You will know better than we do what that does to a machine over a few years.
The upside for anyone selling is real, though. It usually means the driveline has had an easier life than the odometer suggests, and the wear is where you can see it — hoist, tailgate, pins, suspension, brakes.
Tennessee weight law
Two rules that matter more on a county network
Those crossings sit under a statute that is the same across the state, but two parts of it land harder here than they do on a highway route.
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 on none of those lists.
Then § 55-7-103: the department may set a lower maximum from January 15 to April 15, and at other times for weather, repairs or recent construction, with notice posted at the termini of the road and every detour for a week beforehand. On a county network in the mountains that is a real seasonal narrowing rather than a formality.
And § 55-7-104: an overweight vehicle may not be moved at all until the load is reduced into compliance or a permit obtained, and failing to comply is itself a Class C misdemeanour. Four tenths of a mile from the gate, that is not a fine. It is the rest of the day.
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.
Tennessee paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Then the paperwork, and it is a good deal shorter than the route book.
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 that gets repeated 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 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 Clear Creek and Newport pits. Mixers and plant trucks off the Hommel Concrete end of it. County plant too, because a highway department fleet turns over like any other.
Flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks, rollbacks, day cabs, road tractors, service bodies, work trucks and pickups as well — not a Cocke 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 Newport
- 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 spent its life part loaded on posted roads. Is that worse?Different, not worse. Easier on the driveline, harder on the hoist and the loading gear, and more hours than the mileage suggests. Tell us about the body and the pins.
- It is a county highway department machine.We buy those too, and around the Smith Quarry end of Cocke County there are more of them than in most places. They tend to come with a maintenance file, which helps.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.
Why people call
Beyond a truck that has simply done its winters, the reasons here are the familiar ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A hauling contract that ended and a machine with nothing booked against it.
The yards out along the Clear Creek road and around Cocke County usually have one standing that has not moved in a season or two.
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.