Wise County
Eight crushed-stone rows across two towns
Eight crushed-stone rows across this town and Chico record 362 employees between them — the largest single place cluster among the 160 nodes researched in this group.
Two of them are very large. The Bridgeport Stone Plant runs 94 under Martin Marietta, and the Bridgeport Plant runs 79 under Hanson Aggregates, which has worked here since 1956 and describes it as its largest crushed-stone facility. The Lake Bridgeport Quarry adds 63 and the Chico Quarry 17.
Both of the big two are rated for highway work, each carried in the state rated-source catalogue with a surface aggregate classification behind it.
So this district ships to a metro rather than to a town
Those numbers do not come from local demand. Martin Marietta describes this district as about sixty miles from the Dallas area, which is what 362 people are actually working for.
Sixty miles changes the truck. That is a genuine highway leg rather than a pit shuttle, so the equipment here runs loaded at road speed for an hour and then comes back empty, several times a day.
It means mileage on a Wise County truck is real mileage, honestly earned, and the driveline has usually done more work than the body.
Texas weight law
One ceiling, and a permit list that skips stone
Those loaded highway legs run under one statutory ceiling, and 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.
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.
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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Lake Bridgeport Quarry and the Chico Quarry. Day cabs and road tractors for the run toward the metro. Flatbeds, lowboys, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.
A cluster of 362 people turns over a great deal of equipment, and Hanson Aggregates and Martin Marietta ground both run their own schedules.
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 Bridgeport
- 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 mileage is high for a quarry truck.Expected here. Martin Marietta and Hanson Aggregates loads run about sixty miles to the metro, so these are highway trucks that happen to haul stone.
- The box is beaten up but the driveline is good.Common and not a problem. Tell us about both.
- 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.
Why people call
Beyond a fleet turning over, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one contract that outlived it.
Yards around the Chico Quarry and out across Wise County usually have one waiting, and a cluster of 362 people produces a steady supply.
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.