Decatur County
A contractor quarrying for its own jobs, and one selling stone
Two quarries sit under Parsons and the difference between them is who they sell to. Jones Bros Contractors works one with ten people and holds the state approval on it, matched to the register at 0.52 miles. The Parsons Quarry works eleven and is not on that list.
A heavy civil contractor quarrying stone is a different proposition from a producer selling it. The stone goes into the contractor’s own jobs, so the truck fleet follows the contract book rather than an order book — busy while a job runs, quiet between them, and moved to wherever the next one is.
That shows in a machine. Utilisation comes in blocks rather than steadily, and a truck can carry high hours from one hard year and almost none from the next.
The road network
Almost nothing posted, and a cap that clears a real load
Both pits run over a network that is one of the easiest in this state. Decatur County posts 2 of its 71 county-maintained bridges — 2.8 per cent, against a statewide county rate of 12.9.
Within 10 miles of the Jones Bros pit the inventory records 122 structures and 10 are posted, 7 of them county-maintained, the nearest 2.1 miles out. The lowest raw rating is 8.1 metric tonnes, below an empty tandem dump and so not a crossing this trade uses.
The cap that binds a loaded truck is 19.8 tonnes, about 21.8 US tons. Against an empty tandem’s eleven that admits nearly nine tonnes of stone — among the most generous figures anywhere in this lane, and a long way from the eleven-tonne caps that stop a loaded vehicle dead.
FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025, Tennessee file, items 21, 41, 64 and 70. Operating rating is the gross weight of the rating vehicle.
So the mileage here means roughly what it says
Those two figures together describe an unusually straightforward working life. A county posting 2.8 per cent of its bridges and a cap admitting nine tonnes means almost no forced detours and almost no part loading.
A truck off the Jones Bros pit did the miles on its clock and carried something close to what it was meant to carry while it did them, and the same goes for the Parsons Quarry across Decatur County. That is not true on most of the pages in this lane, and it makes the odometer a better guide here than almost anywhere.
What complicates it is the contractor pattern rather than the roads: a machine that sat between jobs deteriorates differently from one that worked steadily. Seals, hoses and batteries are the cheap end of that, and they are the first things to check.
Tennessee weight law
Eleven trades get a margin. Stone is not one of them
Those open roads sit under a statute that still hands this trade nothing extra.
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
Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is one sentence.
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 Jones Bros pit and the Parsons Quarry. Articulated haulers and the plant trucks a contractor moves from job to job.
Day cabs, road tractors, box trucks, straight trucks, flatbeds, rollbacks, tankers, service bodies, work trucks and pickups too — not a Decatur 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 Parsons
- 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 sat for a year between contracts.Ordinary on a Jones Bros machine and not a disqualifier. Sitting perishes seals, hoses and batteries rather than the expensive parts. Tell us when it last ran.
- High miles for a quarry truck.Not suspicious around Decatur County, where 2 of 71 county bridges are posted and the cap is 19.8 tonnes. Nothing here forced it to run short.
- How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever suits you.
Why people call
Beyond a machine that has simply done its jobs, 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 the Jones Bros pit and out across Decatur County 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 by the end of the week. That’s what we’re here for.