We buy trucks in Carrizo Springs

Carrizo Springs carries two extraction nodes rather than one, which is unusual in this lane. The Dimmit Mine reports 33 employees to MSHA under identifier 4105387, operator of record Iron Oak Eagle Ford LLC. Signal Peak Silica of Carrizo reports 50 and resolves by nearest centroid at 3.53 miles, operator SP Silica of Carrizo, LLC.

The operator name on the first one is the detail worth keeping. Iron Oak Eagle Ford LLC works here; Iron Oak West Texas LLC works at Kermit. One company, two subsidiaries, each named for the basin it sits in — which is the plainest single illustration anywhere in this research that the Eagle Ford and the Permian are two markets rather than one. Independence TX, LLC does the same thing differently, holding Floresville with 68 employees and Mentone in Loving County with 35.

Both Carrizo Springs rows are in-basin frac sand, mined close to the wells they serve. The commodity strings read sand, industrial and sand, common, and in both cases the operator names carry the word the form leaves out.

Those two operations sit in a district with a metropolitan edge, and that is the part that matters when a truck comes up for sale. The Eagle Ford’s service centre is San Antonio — a major diversified metro roughly 30 to 40 miles from the core of this district, a city that would exist without the oilfield.

The Permian works differently. Its service centre is Midland–Odessa, an oilfield service city, and a pneumatic tanker for sale there is looking at an oilfield buyer pool. The same tanker in the Eagle Ford is looking at the oilfield plus a metropolitan construction, aggregates and cement industry. That is a structural difference in market breadth, stated as structure and not as a claim about demand: oilfield equipment markets move with drilling activity, and which way that moves next is a forecast we are not making.

One number that belongs to the district and not to these two nodes: capacity figures in the two-million-annual-ton range circulate for named Eagle Ford facilities in Atascosa and Dimmit counties, and none of those named facilities is confirmed as either of the rows above. They describe the district, and that is how they are recorded here.

Those loads run heavy, and the relief a heavy load usually gets is the part Texas does not extend to this commodity.

Texas legal limits without a permit are 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle and 34,000 lb on a tandem.

Weight relief comes through permits written for named industries: ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. No Texas specialized industry permit covers sand, so an overweight frac sand haul out of Dimmit County is on a general Chapter 623 permit.

That permit carries a fifteen thousand dollar bond and liability for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges, and it is the rule identified in this research as most likely to actually bite this industry. It authorises axle weight plus ten per cent and gross plus five per cent, with registration to a maximum 80,000 lb.

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

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is a single 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.

Texas has no percentage threshold for salvage. Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091 brands a salvage motor vehicle where there is damage to, or a missing, major component part and the cost of repairs exceeds the actual cash value immediately before the damage — effectively one hundred per cent, the most seller-favourable of the six states researched alongside it.

The section enumerates thirteen major component parts and names the truck cab without qualification. It excludes repainting and sales tax from the repair cost, which on an oilfield truck that has been sandblasted by its own working life is not a small exclusion.

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

Those rules land the same way on every body style, and so does the offer. Whatever you drive, it does not change what we do next.

Pneumatic tankers and belly dumps off the sand. Flatbeds set up for sealed containers, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, vacuum and water trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

We buy all of them. With San Antonio 30 to 40 miles off the district core, coming to you and driving it away is straightforward here, and coming to you and towing it is just as normal. We can also buy it remotely and arrange the tow, and you are welcome to drive it to us. The Dimmit Mine and Signal Peak Silica of Carrizo between them account for 83 people on the MSHA rolls in this one town.

• 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.
• Do you come out to Dimmit County?Yes. We come to you and drive it away, or we come to you and tow it. We can also buy it remotely and arrange the tow, with no visit at all, and driving it to us stays open if you prefer.
• Is an oilfield-configured truck harder to sell?Not to us, and in this district it has a wider audience than it would further west — San Antonio is 30 to 40 miles out and its construction, aggregates and cement trades buy the same equipment the oilfield does.
• 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.
• My tanker worked wellsites.Then it has hours on it the odometer never recorded, because wellsite queuing is engine time. Tell us roughly how much. It does not change whether we buy it.

Those are the mechanics. The reasons behind a call are more personal than that.

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck that stopped earning when the completions moved off and has been parked in a Dimmit County yard since.

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, whether it ran for Iron Oak Eagle Ford LLC or for somebody with one truck and a contract.