We buy trucks in Kosse

The mine row nearest this town is named for a machine rather than a place, which usually marks a travelling crushing spread that belongs nowhere in particular. Here it does not, and two other records are why.

The state environmental register carries an active aggregate production registration 0.13 miles from that coordinate — site name Mitchell Pit, material limestone, running to an expiry in October 2026. Registration under the state rule is granted per site and renewed each year, so an active one is evidence of a fixed place, not a machine passing through.

The second record is the headcount: sixteen people on the federal mine register. A registered extraction site carrying sixteen employees is a fixed operation whose plant happens to be portable equipment — a different thing from the two- and three-person travelling spreads found elsewhere with no site of their own.

That correction changes what a seller should expect. A travelling spread takes its trucks with it and sells them anywhere; a fixed pit sixteen people deep runs the same loaded route out of Limestone County day after day, and its equipment stays local.

Those runs are short and heavy. Loading shock and brake-heavy descents put wear into a chassis that the odometer never sees, so a low-mileage dump truck out of a limestone pit has usually worked harder than the number suggests.

It also means trucks come up for sale here on contract timing rather than on wear. The Mitchell Pit registration renews annually, and a year that does not renew the same way puts equipment on the market that is mechanically sound.

Those loads meet a weight rule that is short to state and easy to get backwards.

The ceiling is the plain federal one: 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle, 34,000 lb on a tandem. Texas grants no commodity variance of the kind Georgia and Kentucky write for named cargo.

The general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, with registration to 80,000 lb and a fifteen-thousand-dollar bond. What comes with it is liability: the permit holder answers for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges. Pennsylvania allocates road cost the same way, through a bond per linear mile and an excess-maintenance agreement; Ohio instead puts a signposting duty on the mine operator. Texas and Pennsylvania both put the road on the carrier.

And the two percentages run against each other. On a load-zoned road the permitted weight drops ten per cent below the maximum, so the permit’s five per cent on gross and the zone’s ten per cent reduction are not to be added.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Chapter 623 permits. 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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Mitchell Pit work. Flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, mixers, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Limestone County sits between Waco and the east Texas timber belt, so a seller here has more than one direction to move a truck in.

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 truck worked a pit, not a highway.Then the hours matter more than the miles. Around the Mitchell Pit that is the normal shape and it is not a problem.
• 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. Limestone County and the roads around it run the same pattern.

Beyond a pit 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 Mitchell Pit and across Limestone County 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.