We buy trucks in Freer

The row that reaches Freer is a target range, the Dixie Target Range, and it reaches this town by nearest-centroid fallback at 16.34 miles. Sixteen miles is a long way for an attachment, and it is worth being blunt about what that means: the range is not at Freer. This is the closest place carrying a page, so the record hangs it here.

McMullen County holds exactly two rows and both are target ranges — this one and a second up at Fowlerton. The two are near-identical entries in the same county, and only one of them reaches a page.

That asymmetry is a property of the record rather than of the ground, and the research behind this page recorded it as one: the page outcome varies inside a single installation, a single county and a single pair of near-identical rows. We would rather tell you the attachment is loose than dress 16.34 miles up as a neighbour.

Those two rows are the whole of the record for this county, and they are not what puts trucks on these roads.

This is Eagle Ford brush country, and the working traffic through it is oilfield and ranch: winch and gin-pole trucks, water and vacuum trucks, tandem dumps carrying caliche to pads, flatbeds with pipe and equipment, fuel and lube trucks, and the crew pickups behind all of them. None of that shows up as a row in a node list, which is exactly why we are not going to pretend that a range 16.34 miles off describes the local fleet.

The wear pattern out here follows the ground rather than the industry. Unpaved lease roads, long distances between anything, heat, and dust get into frames, suspensions, radiators, air systems and bodies. A truck can look tired and be mechanically sound, or run quietly and have a frame that has taken years of washboard. We ask what ground it worked and read it from there, because at this distance from a dealer nobody is getting a useful answer from the odometer alone.

Those loads run under a ceiling shaped differently here than in most states.

Without a permit Texas sets 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle and 34,000 lb on a tandem — the plain federal figures. With a Texas permit the single axle rises to 25,000 lb and the tandem to 46,000 lb.

The permit lifting the axle limits rather than the gross is the unusual part and worth carrying. Whether a Texas permit also raises the gross was not established by the research behind this page, and it is not asserted here in either direction.

Ready-mixed concrete gets there without applying at all: 23,000 lb single and 46,000 lb tandem with no permit. So a mixer and a caliche truck on the same lease road are working to different numbers, and only one of them had to ask.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Texas permit and ready-mixed concrete limits. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond those numbers, 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.

The Texas salvage test is the most seller-favourable on file. A truck is branded salvage only where the cost of repairs — parts and labour included, repainting and sales tax both excluded — exceeds one hundred per cent of the actual cash value immediately before the damage, actual cash value meaning market value.

Both exclusions push a truck further from the brand rather than closer to it, and on a heavy vehicle paint is a large repair line — which out here, where dust strips a truck long before anything mechanical fails, is the ordinary case rather than the exception. Texas has also not adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks rule.

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.

Winch trucks and gin-pole trucks off the lease work. Water and vacuum trucks, tandem and tri-axle dumps, belly dumps, flatbeds and stake beds, day cabs and road tractors, fuel and lube trucks, rollbacks, service bodies, and the crew pickups behind them.

We buy all of them. Freer is a long way from anywhere, so buying it remotely and arranging the tow is the ordinary path here rather than the fallback — we can settle the whole thing without you waiting in a yard. Coming to you and driving it away, or coming to you and towing it, are both open, and driving it to us stays open too. The Dixie Target Range at 16.34 miles and the row at Fowlerton are the only two entries on file anywhere in McMullen 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 actually come out this far?We do, and out here buying it remotely and arranging the tow is usually the easiest route for everybody. Coming to you and driving it away is open, and so is driving it to us.
• Is there a base at Freer?No. The Dixie Target Range attaches to this town at 16.34 miles by nearest-centroid fallback, which means this was simply the closest place carrying a page. The only other row in McMullen County is a second range up at Fowlerton.
• My truck has never been on pavement.Common here and not a problem. Lease-road work puts the wear into frames, suspensions, air systems and radiators rather than the driveline, so tell us the ground and we will read the truck from that.
• Do I need an emissions test to sell it?No. Diesel vehicles are exempt from Texas emissions inspection, and this is not a programme county 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 an outfit that has grown out of one truck and into another and needs the first one gone. Oilfield work runs in cycles that have nothing to do with how good a truck is, and in country this empty — two rows on the whole county, the Dixie Target Range 16.34 miles out and one more at Fowlerton — there is no local trade to absorb a unit when the work stops.

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 Freer and out across the brush country.