We buy trucks in Kirbyville

The node here is a rail yard carried under the town’s own name, operated by the railway that took over this line, and its coordinate sits 0.61 miles from the centre of Kirbyville — inside the place rather than out on the county road. It is the only rail-yard row attached to this town in the central list.

What the yard handles could not be determined from any source read for this research. Not inferred from the region, not filled in from what a yard of that size usually carries: simply not determined, and recorded that way.

The location itself carries a caveat too. Rail-yard coordinates in this dataset are the mean of the vertices of a track line rather than a surveyed facility point, and every one of the 2,459 rail-yard rows was derived the same way. So the position is a good indication of where the tracks are and a poor one for where a gate is.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A yard inside a small town means loaded trucks are running town streets to reach it, not just county highways, and short tight turns are harder on a tractor than open miles are.

What it does not tell you is what those trucks carried, and this page is not going to guess. Jasper County work could put any number of things on a trailer, and the commodity record is blank.

None of which changes how a truck is bought. A tractor that has spent years making short runs to a yard 0.61 miles from the middle of town has a particular kind of wear, and that is a thing to ask about rather than to assume.

Those loads run under one statutory ceiling, and stone is conspicuously absent from the relief.

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 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. 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 carries 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 the 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 rule, the paperwork is where Texas differs most from its neighbours.

We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route; neither stops a sale.

Texas brands salvage only where repair cost exceeds the actual cash value immediately before the damage, and actual cash value means market value — effectively a hundred per cent, against seventy-five in six states, seventy in Arkansas and sixty in Oklahoma. It is the highest bar recorded on file, and unlike the percentage states it carries a second condition: the damage must involve a major component part.

The separate nonrepairable class has five routes into it, including one — sold for export only — that appears in no other state on file. New Mexico is the only other state with such a class, and there a single test defines it.

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. Log trucks and timber rigs, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Jasper County is a long way from a big city, so buying a truck here often means arranging the move rather than expecting somebody to drive it in. A tractor that has spent its life on the 0.61 miles between the yard and the town centre is no harder to collect than one parked on a highway.

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.
• I’m an hour from anywhere.That is the usual case in Jasper County and it is not a problem. Most trucks out here are bought remotely and the tow is arranged; nobody needs to drive it anywhere, not even the 0.61 miles into town.
• 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, and out here that is the normal answer. We can buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or come to you and drive it away, or come and tow it, or you can drive it to us if you would rather.

Beyond a hauling contract going quiet, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one job that outlived the job.

Yards around the 0.61 miles of track in town, and out through Jasper County, usually have one parked behind the shop.

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.