We buy trucks in El Paso

Seven crushed-stone operations sit under this city and they are genuinely separate businesses, not one company’s pits. McKelligon Canyon is much the largest at 72 employees, working dolomite. Ned Finney Quarry runs 12, Hitt Canyon Quarry 8, Avispa Canyon Quarry 6, and Hueco Quarry, Macias Pit and the D. S. Quarry 5 apiece.

Three are rated for highway work. The state highway department carries Jobe Materials Avispa Canyon, Del Norte Materials Hueco Rock Quarry and the Sun City dolomite source in its rated-source catalogue, each with a surface aggregate classification behind it.

One record oddity is worth stating rather than smoothing over. Two rows carry near-identical operator strings — one spelled out and one contracted — on the D. S. Quarry and the Pipeline Quarry. They are almost certainly the same company recorded twice, and the research flagged it rather than merging them by guess.

Those canyon quarries sit above the place they supply, which is the opposite of the usual arrangement.

It means a loaded truck spends its working life coming down a grade rather than going up one, and a grade takes brakes and cooling systems the way flat miles never do. Empty back up, loaded back down, all day.

None of it stops us buying. It does mean the brake and driveline history matters more here than the odometer, and Jobe Materials or Del Norte Materials equipment is usually maintained with exactly that in mind.

All of those loads 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 McKelligon Canyon and Ned Finney work. Day cabs and road tractors for the longer desert legs. Flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Seven separate operators means seven separate fleets turning equipment over on seven schedules, and the Hueco Quarry end of the county runs its own.

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.
• The brakes have had a hard life on the canyon grades.Expected on a Hitt Canyon Quarry or Avispa Canyon truck and not a disqualifier. Tell us what has been done to them.
• The engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• 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.
• How far out do you come?All of the county and out into Hudspeth County. Distance has never stopped a sale, and plenty out that way we buy remotely and tow.

Beyond a quarry fleet turning over, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A back that has had enough of the canyon road.

Yards below McKelligon Canyon and out toward Hudspeth County usually have one waiting, and the Macias Pit end of the county sees its share.

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.