We buy trucks in Eastland

Three crushed-stone rows attach here, and two of them are the same piece of ground. Both match the same active state registration at 0.20 miles — a single 47-acre site — while being recorded under two different operators.

One of the pair is a fixed pit with 8 employees. The other is machine-named with 10, held by J H Strain and Sons, who also run a crusher at Tye in Taylor County. So a portable plant is working on somebody else’s registered ground, which is a common arrangement and an easy one to misread as two quarries.

The third row is separate and larger at 11 employees, rated for highway work by the state under Vulcan Materials, with its nearest registration 3.3 miles off rather than on top of it.

That shared site is why equipment here does not read consistently.

A truck on the fixed pit runs the ordinary short loaded cycle from one gate. A truck following the portable plant runs highway legs between setups and then sits while it is rigged. Same address on the paperwork, completely different lives.

It is worth asking about rather than assuming. The J H Strain and Sons end of the yard and the Vulcan Materials end produce trucks whose mileage means different things.

Both patterns 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.

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.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the 47-acre site and the Vulcan Materials ground. Lowboys and the tractors that move the portable plant. Day cabs, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Two operators sharing one registration at 0.20 miles turn over more equipment than a county this size would suggest.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• 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 followed the crusher rather than working one pit.Then it has highway miles and idle spells both. J H Strain and Sons equipment usually does — tell us about both.
• The box is beaten up but the driveline is good.Normal on Vulcan Materials pit work, 3.3 miles from its nearest registration, 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.

Beyond a pit contract ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one job that outlived the job.

Yards around the Vulcan Materials ground and the 47 acres shared with J H Strain and Sons 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.