Bell County
Two operations, two trades, twenty miles apart
Two operations attach to this town by their own recorded city, and they are not in the same business.
The Nolanville Mine & Mill works crushed and broken limestone with twenty-three people, under Lhoist North America of Texas. The other is Hilliard Dozer, six people, working construction sand and gravel.
Their coordinates sit 19.77 miles apart, which is a long way for two rows filed under one town. Both carry a recorded working radius of 35 miles, so their catchments overlap across most of the county.
So the limestone leaves here and is burned somewhere else
That first operator is the one with a story attached, and it is a story about where the material goes.
The United States Geological Survey lists Lhoist as operator of three of the five lime plants in Texas — at Clifton, Marble Falls and New Braunfels. The Nolanville site is not among them, which is consistent with a quarry and mill feeding that chain rather than a kiln standing on this ground.
The same operator holds the Crawford Mine & Mill, 32.1 miles from this one, so the two sites sit inside one company’s footprint rather than competing across a county line.
The company itself began in 1966 as Chemical Lime Company, with its first quarry at Clifton, and became part of the Lhoist group in 1998. That last part is a trade source rather than a government one, and it is attributed here for that reason.
What it means for a truck is straightforward. Stone loaded here does not stop here, and the legs out to a kiln are highway legs.
Texas weight law
One ceiling, and a permit list that skips stone
Limestone or sand and gravel, both load under one statutory ceiling.
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 is written for a named industry: ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. Nothing on that list covers aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products, so both operations here fall back to the general permit.
That general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, with registration to 80,000 lb, a fifteen thousand dollar bond, and liability for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges. On a load-zoned road the permitted weight is ten per cent less than the maximum, so those two percentages run against each other and must not be added.
Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Chapter 623 permits. Information, not legal advice.
Texas paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
The Texas salvage line runs further in the seller’s favour than any other state on file. A truck is branded salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds its actual cash value immediately before the damage — effectively the whole value, with no percentage in the test. It is a two-part test as well: there must be damage to, or a missing, major component part, and the statute enumerates thirteen.
Repainting and sales tax come out of the repair figure first, which no other state on file does. On an older truck with cosmetic damage that is the difference between a brand and no brand.
Emissions inspection is not a step for a diesel truck in Texas. The state exempts diesel vehicles outright.
Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091; TCEQ vehicle emissions programme. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
What we buy here
All of that is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Nolanville ground, sand and gravel trucks off the Hilliard Dozer end, day cabs and road tractors for the runs out to a kiln.
Then the rest of it: lowboys, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.
Two trades 19.77 miles apart under one town name turn over more equipment than a single pit would.
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 Belton
- 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.
- It worked limestone, not sand. Does that change anything?No. Bell County carries both trades under this town’s name and we buy off either.
- It ran for the same operator at two different pits.Common here — the Nolanville and Crawford sites are 32.1 miles apart under one operator. Bring whatever paperwork names each entity and it goes faster.
- 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 buy it remotely and arrange the tow, come to you and drive it away, come and tow it, or you can drive it to us. Whichever suits the truck and your week.
Why people call
Beyond a contract ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one job that outlived it.
Yards around the Nolanville Mine and across Bell 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.