We buy trucks in Florence

Four crushed-stone operations attach here and they record 24 employees between them — an average of six a site, the smallest average of any place cluster among the 120 nodes researched in this group.

The CR 239 Quarry is the biggest at 10. Lone Star Aggregates and JGM Aggregates run 5 apiece, and the America operation 4. One of them is rated for road work: the state highway department carries Alleyton Resource Corp in its rated-source catalogue for the Florence quarry.

A fifth row is filed here and probably should not be. A dimension-stone operation with 24 employees carries this town on its record while its coordinate sits 36.9 miles away in Travis County, south of Austin. The operator’s own address was never investigated, so it is recorded as a discrepancy rather than resolved.

Six people to a site is a different business from a quarry with a shift pattern, and it changes who owns the trucks.

At that size the hauling is frequently done by people who own their own truck and pull for whichever pit is running, rather than by a fleet on the payroll. The equipment gets looked after because it belongs to the person driving it, and it gets sold when that person stops.

It is worth saying because it changes what a seller here usually has: one truck, known history, and a straight reason for selling it. Alleyton Resource Corp aside, few of the people working these pits are on a fleet payroll, and Lone Star Aggregates keeps a crew you could count on two hands.

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 CR 239 Quarry and the smaller pits. Flatbeds off the stone side. Day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Lone Star Aggregates ground and the Alleyton Resource Corp quarry turn over a truck at a time rather than a fleet at a time, which suits how we buy anyway.

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 is my own truck, not a fleet truck.That is the normal shape around Lone Star Aggregates and the Alleyton Resource Corp pit, and it usually makes the whole thing simpler.
• 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.
• 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 going quiet, the reasons here are almost always personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck that stopped earning and has been sitting since.

Places around the CR 239 Quarry and out toward Travis County, 36.9 miles off, 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.