We buy trucks in Kingsville

The node recorded against this town is the naval air station, and its coordinate falls 3.06 miles from the centre of town. Its own coordinate reverse-geocodes to Kleberg County.

That is very nearly all the record holds. What the installation does, how much ground it covers and how many people work there were not established by the research behind this page, and were written down as not established rather than estimated.

It is worth saying that out loud, because the tempting move is to fill the gap with something plausible. A base of unknown size supports an unknown amount of trucking, and a page that guessed at the figure would be inventing the one thing a seller might actually check.

That absence does not leave much doubt about the equipment itself, though. Support work around any installation runs on the same kinds of trucks — service bodies, flatbeds, box trucks and crew pickups — and those are bought and sold on their own condition rather than on who the contract was with.

It also means the useful questions are ordinary ones. How many hours are on it, what has been replaced recently, whether the title is in hand. Those answers do not depend on anything about the installation that this page could not establish.

Kleberg County sits on the Corpus Christi side of the coastal plain, so a truck here is inside reach of a real regional market rather than isolated by distance.

Those loads run to figures that are worth knowing before a sale rather than after one.

Texas sets gross at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb. Those are the plain federal numbers, and Texas adds no commodity variance to them.

A permit moves the axles rather than the gross. Under the state’s size and weight schedule a permitted single axle rises to 25,000 lb and a permitted tandem to 46,000 lb, while ready-mixed concrete trucks run 23,000 and 46,000 with no permit at all. Whether a permit also lifts the gross was not established, and this page does not state that it does.

The permit layer is written by named industry — ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, super heavy single-trip — and there is no permit named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Texas Department of Motor Vehicles size and weight limits. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond what a truck weighs, what it is called on paper is the other thing worth settling early.

We need a title unless the truck never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement and there is a bonded route where no title exists, so this is a step rather than an obstacle.

The salvage test is a comparison: repair cost, including parts and labour, against the vehicle’s actual cash value immediately before the damage. What Texas leaves out of that repair cost is unusual. Repainting comes out, and so does sales tax on the total. Missouri excludes airbags, tires, sound systems and hail damage; Kentucky excludes airbag reinstallation; Texas is the only state on file to exclude paintwork.

For a truck whose damage is mostly cosmetic, taking the paint out of the numerator moves the answer a long way from the brand.

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 equipment is equipment we buy. Service bodies and work trucks off contract work. Flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, and the pickups that go with a crew.

Because the installation’s own figures were never established, we do not judge a truck here off any assumption about that work. We look at the truck. Kleberg County work and the traffic to and from the air station 3.06 miles out put the same wear on a chassis either way.

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 was a contractor truck, not a fleet truck.That is common in Kleberg County and it is fine. Contractor trucks often have better records than fleet ones.
• 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. The 3.06 miles between town and the air station makes no difference to that.

Beyond a contract ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A posting that moved and left a truck behind.

Yards around Kleberg County, and out along the Corpus Christi road, usually have one sitting under a tarp.

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.