We buy trucks in Abilene

Most of what is filed under this city is not in this city. The Lueders district sits 24.9 miles north in Jones County — confirmed twice over, by coordinate cross-check and by the quarry companies’ own websites — and this town is its finishing and distribution end.

The district is substantial. Twelve rows span 22.0 miles and report 132 employees between them, working the limestone that gives the district its name and which is one of the most widely used building stones in the state and the southwest.

Locally there is one crushed-stone operation, the Black Lease Quarry at 12 employees with its nearest active registration 5.5 miles off, and a single rail yard 0.63 miles from the centre of town.

That split between quarry and finishing town is what produces the local haulage, and the quarry companies publish the structure themselves.

Rough block ships between quarry operations across the state and beyond. Finished product — chopped stone, thin veneer, cut pieces — goes out palletised and strapped on a flatbed, and that is the leg that runs the 24.9 miles into town.

The two wear a deck differently. A palletised run is forklift-loaded and forklift-unloaded at both ends, so the damage is tine marks across the boards rather than the gouging you get from rough block. Worth saying, because one of those looks worse and matters less. Across Jones County the same twelve rows span 22.0 miles.

Both loads run under one statutory ceiling, and dimension stone is not on the relief list.

Texas sets gross weight at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb — the plain federal figures, with no commodity variance of the kind Georgia and Kentucky grant.

What Texas grants instead is permits, and each one is written for a named industry: ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. There is no permit named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products. So a stone hauler here gets the general permit and nothing else, while a ready-mix truck sits on the list — two trades a reader might treat as one, on opposite sides of the line.

The general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, and it comes with a bond and liability for actual damage to load-restricted roads. On a load-zoned road the permitted weight is ten per cent less than the maximum, so those two percentages run in opposite directions and must never be added together.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Chapter 623 permits. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork comes down to 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. Both are ordinary and neither stops a sale.

One Texas rule is worth knowing because it runs further than any other state on file. Texas brands a truck salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds the actual cash value before the damage — effectively one hundred per cent, against eighty in Florida and sixty in Oklahoma. And it is a two-part test, not pure arithmetic: there must also be damage to, or a missing, major component part.

The statute lists thirteen major component parts, and the calculation leaves out repainting and sales tax, which no other state on file excludes. For a truck whose damage is mostly cosmetic that moves the answer a long way.

Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Flatbeds off the palletised Lueders run, tine marks and all. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Black Lease Quarry. Day cabs and road tractors, lowboys, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

A district of 132 people spread across 22.0 miles turns over equipment steadily, and the yard 0.63 miles from the centre sees its share.

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 deck is covered in forklift marks.Expected on the 24.9-mile palletised run out of Jones County. Deck wear is a repair, not a missing component.
• It hauled rough block, not finished stone.We buy both. The Black Lease Quarry end and the dimension-stone end produce different trucks and we are interested in either.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route.
• Do you have to come out to look at it?Not necessarily. We can come to you and drive it away, come and tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you can drive it to us. Whichever suits the truck and your week.

Beyond a quarry contract ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one run that outlived the run.

Yards around the Black Lease Quarry and up toward Jones County usually have one waiting.

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.