We buy trucks in Comanche

The operation on file here is the Proctor Quarry, with six people on MSHA’s books, working crushed limestone. Its operator is Ingram Readymix No. 87, L.L.C.

That operator name is the whole story of the page. A quarry owned by a ready-mixed concrete business is not selling stone on the open market — it is feeding its own plants. The rock goes into concrete rather than to whoever bids for it, which makes this a captive operation rather than a merchant aggregate one.

It changes what the trucks are. A merchant quarry ships to many buyers over varying distances; a captive pit runs a short, repeating leg between the face and the plant, and the fleet around it tends to include mixers as well as dumps.

That ownership produces a genuine oddity in Texas law, and it lands squarely on this operator. Texas grants weight relief through permits written for named industries, and ready-mixed concrete is on the list. Aggregate, stone, sand and quarry products are not.

So the mixer leaving an Ingram Readymix plant is in a named industry with a permit written for it, while the dump truck bringing rock to that same plant out of the Proctor Quarry, for that same company, falls back to the general route with nothing written for it. Two trades a reader would treat as one, on opposite sides of the line, inside one business.

For a seller it means the truck you have may have lived under either regime depending on which end of the operation it worked. A mixer and a quarry dump out of the same yard have had different regulatory lives and different mechanical ones, and we would rather ask than assume.

Those two regimes still share a ceiling, and it is the plain federal one.

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, with no commodity variance of the kind Georgia and Kentucky grant.

The named specialized industry permits are ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. No permit is named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products, so the stone side of a business like this one gets the general Chapter 623 permit and nothing else.

That permit authorises axle weight plus ten per cent and gross plus five per cent, requires a fifteen thousand dollar bond, and makes the holder responsible 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 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 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, against eighty in Florida and sixty in Oklahoma.

The calculation excludes repainting and sales tax. On a mixer or a quarry dump, where the drum and the body take the abuse and the paint goes early, that exclusion moves the answer a long way. This county is not on the emissions inspection programme list, and diesel vehicles are exempt in any case.

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.

Mixers off the ready-mix side. End dumps and belly dumps off the pit. Flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, water trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

We buy all of them, and a drum that has hardened concrete in it does not put us off — it is a truck, and it is complete or it is not. Coming to you and driving it away is straightforward here, coming to you and towing it is just as normal, we can buy it remotely and arrange the tow with no visit at all, and you are welcome to drive it to us. The Proctor Quarry under Ingram Readymix No. 87, L.L.C. is the one extraction row on file in this county.

• 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 buy concrete mixers?Yes. A mixer is a truck like any other to us. Ingram Readymix No. 87, L.L.C. runs the quarry here, so mixers are ordinary equipment in this county and we treat them as such.
• Do you really come out this far?We do. Coming to you and driving it away, or coming to you and towing it, are both normal. We can also buy it remotely and arrange the tow, with no visit at all, and driving it to us stays open.
• 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 dump ran the Proctor Quarry.Then it worked a short repeating leg rather than a highway lane, so the hours will run ahead of the miles. Tell us both. 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 a plant changed hands and has been parked at the back of a 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 Ingram Readymix No. 87, L.L.C. or hauled out of the Proctor Quarry for somebody else.