We buy trucks in Crane

Three extraction rows attach to Crane, and the word sand covers two different businesses across them. The Crane County Plant is carried as a surface operation working Sand, Industrial NEC under identifier 4105331, operator of record U.S. Silica Energy Company, with 85 employees reported to MSHA. The Crane Plant, under Iron Oak Sand LLC, is recorded with 30 and carried as construction sand and gravel. The Locker Mine, under Damp Sandco, LLC, is recorded with five, and it attaches by nearest centroid at 15.49 miles rather than from inside the town.

The commodity string on the first of those understates what it is. Sand, Industrial NEC is a filing category; the operator name carries the word Silica, and industrial sand in this county means frac sand — proppant for the Permian Basin. The research behind this page recorded that as a type string understating a node, which is where it stops. Nobody re-filed the record and we are not doing so here.

The other two are construction sand and gravel, and that is base, fill and concrete sand for local work rather than proppant for a well pad. Two trades in one county, and the equipment does not move between them as freely as the shared word suggests.

Those two trades arrived here by different routes, and the proppant one has a freight history behind it rather than a mining one.

Frac sand used to come from the Northern White deposits in Wisconsin and Minnesota and move to Texas by rail over hundreds of miles. From the mid-2010s the industry went to in-basin sand — first to deposits near Brady, then to the dunes out towards Kermit and Monahans. Read as freight, a long-distance rail haul was replaced by a short-distance truck haul, and in-basin sand now reaches a well pad by truck for the whole of its journey, from a mine perhaps 20 to 60 miles off.

That is why a county this size carries three operations and the equipment to match. It also sets the wear pattern: sand-box drivers complete a wellsite swap in 10 to 15 minutes, belly-dump drivers wait out a 5 to 15 minute gravity discharge plus positioning, and either way the queueing puts hours on an engine that the odometer never records. On a truck out of here the hour meter is the honest number and we read it that way.

Those loads run under a single ceiling whichever of the two trades they came off.

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, each written for a named industry: ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. No permit is named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products, so a sand hauler falls back to the general Chapter 623 route and nothing else.

That permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, takes a fifteen thousand dollar bond, and makes the holder responsible for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges. Of everything in the rule file that provision is the one most likely to reach an operator whose business is running heavy over county and lease 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; § 623.011. 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.

One Texas rule 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. It is a two-part test rather than pure arithmetic: there must also be damage to, or a missing, major component part, and the section names thirteen of them.

The calculation leaves out repainting and sales tax, which no other state on file excludes. On a sand truck, where the paint goes first and the body goes second, that exclusion moves the answer a long way.

Emissions inspection does not reach you either. Diesel vehicles are not required to be emissions-inspected in Texas, and this county is not on the programme list in any case, so the question is settled twice over.

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.

Sand-box flatbeds and the drop frames that go with them. Pneumatic tankers, belly dumps and end dumps, day cabs and road tractors, water trucks, vacuum trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, service bodies, and the crew pickups behind all of it.

We buy all of them. Crane is a long way from most places, so buying it remotely and arranging the tow is the ordinary path here rather than the fallback — we can do the whole thing without you standing in the yard. Coming to you and driving it away, or coming to you and towing it, are both open, and you are welcome to drive it to us. The Crane County Plant, the Crane Plant and the Locker Mine are the three extraction rows on file in this county outside Monahans.

• 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 actually come out this far?We do, and we also buy remotely and arrange the tow, which out here is often the simpler of the two. Driving it to us stays open if that suits you better.
• I have one truck, not a fleet.Fine by us. The Locker Mine out at 15.49 miles runs five people and the Crane Plant runs thirty, so most of what moves around here belongs to somebody with a handful of trucks rather than a yard full.
• The odometer is low but the truck is worn out.That is the normal shape of a Permian Basin sand truck and we expect it. Wellsite queueing puts hours on an engine the odometer never sees, so we ask for the hour meter and read the truck from that.
• My tanker hauled sand, not cement.Worth telling us. Proppant is chosen for hardness and crush resistance, and those same qualities wear a blower, product lines and aeration pads faster than cement or calcium carbonate do. Same trailer, different remaining life.
• Do I need an emissions test to sell it?No. Diesel vehicles are exempt from Texas emissions inspection, and this county is not on the programme list either way.
• 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.

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

Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended, or a company that has grown out of one truck and into another and needs the first one gone. Oilfield equipment turns over on a cycle that has nothing to do with how good the truck is, and a sand hauler parked between contracts is a common enough sight around here.

The construction sand side turns over for steadier reasons. Iron Oak Sand LLC and Damp Sandco, LLC are selling base and fill into local work, and that work does not stop and start with a rig count, so a truck coming off it is usually just an old truck.

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, in Crane and out across the Permian Basin.