Williamson County
A quarry with its own railroad
The Georgetown Quarry and Plant records 144 employees, which makes it the second-largest crushed-stone operation among the 120 nodes researched in this group. Its operator has quarried here since 1947.
The founding family did something unusual with the output: they established a short line of their own, the Georgetown Railroad, connecting the quarry to the national network. Most pits load trucks and stop there.
Three smaller rows sit alongside it. The Weir Plant runs 24, the Ronald Reagan Plant 9, and Lone Star Aggregates 4. The state highway department carries the Crushed Stone source in its rated catalogue with a surface aggregate classification behind it.
So one of those four feeds concrete rather than road base
Those smaller rows are not all doing the same job. The Weir Plant is operated by Alamo Concrete Products, which means part of its output goes into ready-mixed concrete rather than out as aggregate.
It matters for weight, and it is the one place in Texas where a commodity gets an axle allowance without paperwork. A ready-mixed concrete truck may run at 23,000 lb on a single axle and 46,000 lb on a tandem with no permit at all — where the aggregate hauler leaving the same county gets nothing.
So two trucks on the same road out of two neighbouring pits are under different rules, purely because of what is in the back.
Texas weight law
One ceiling, and a permit list that skips stone
Beyond that one allowance, everything here runs under the ordinary ceiling.
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.
Texas paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
What we buy here
All of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Georgetown Quarry. Mixers off the Weir Plant side. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.
A 144-employee operation with its own railroad turns over a lot of equipment, and the Ronald Reagan Plant end of the county adds its own.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Georgetown
- 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.
- Is a mixer treated differently from a dump truck?On the road it is: ready-mixed concrete gets an axle allowance with no permit, and aggregate does not. To us they are both trucks we buy.
- The drum or the box is worn out.Wear is not a missing component. A Weir Plant mixer or a Crushed Stone hauler with a tired body is still a truck we buy.
- 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.
Why people call
Beyond a fleet turning over, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one contract that outlived it.
Yards around the Ronald Reagan Plant and the Weir Plant usually have one waiting, and 144 employees at the main quarry turn over a lot of equipment.
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.