We buy trucks in Groesbeck

Four crushed-stone operations sit under Groesbeck and all four work limestone. Cedar Creek Stone is the biggest at 23 employees. The Christmas Quarry runs 13, the Honest Ridge Quarry 5, and the Bond Quarry 4.

What is unusual is how well documented they are. Each one has an active state aggregate registration recorded within a mile of the node — Bond at 0.01 miles, Honest Ridge at 0.59, Christmas at 0.20, Cedar Creek at 0.91. That is the tightest cluster of confirmed registrations on this lane, and it means the rock is not in doubt.

One of them is rated for road work. The state highway department carries Cedar Creek Stone in its rated-source catalogue with a Los Angeles abrasion figure behind it — a hardness test, and the reason an aggregate ends up under a highway rather than in a driveway.

Those four pits are close together and the loads leaving them are heavy from the first yard. A stone truck is at its working weight the moment it is filled and stays there until it tips.

It is a particular kind of wear. Brakes, springs and rear ends take it rather than the engine, and a pit truck can be mechanically sound while the frame and the box have had a hard life.

None of that stops us buying. It does mean the body is often the honest indicator here, and the odometer is not, whether the truck ran for Cedar Creek Stone or for one of the smaller pits. Cedar Creek Stone sits 0.91 miles from its registered site, and the loads leave heavy from the first yard.

Those loaded runs sit under one statutory ceiling, and limestone 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 Cedar Creek Stone and Christmas Quarry work. Day cabs and road tractors for the longer tips. Flatbeds, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

The Honest Ridge and Bond pits are small operations and they turn equipment over like everybody else.

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 box is beaten up but the driveline is good.That is the normal shape of a Limestone County pit truck and it is not a problem. Tell us about both.
• 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. The Christmas Quarry and the Honest Ridge pit run the same pattern.

Beyond a pit slowing down, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck sitting since a family business closed, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Yards around the Cedar Creek Stone road 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. The Bond Quarry and the other Limestone County pits usually have something coming free.