We buy trucks in La Porte

Most towns on this site carry one node. This one carries four, and they are four different trades. The rail yard is operated by Union Pacific and its coordinate sits 1.18 miles from the centre of town, inside the place; it is the only rail-yard row attached here.

Alongside it the central list records a liquid bulk terminal run by Circon Environmental, a roll-on roll-off marine terminal at Barbours Cut, and a container terminal — the Barbours Cut Container Terminal — served by its own intermodal ramp.

What the rail yard itself handles was not determined from any source read for this research, and is recorded that way rather than guessed. The container and marine terminals are a different matter: what a box terminal moves is boxes, and that is a road pattern more than a commodity.

Those four nodes together describe a drayage economy rather than a line-haul one. Tractors here work short, dense, repetitive turns between a terminal gate, a yard and a warehouse, often inside a few miles, and they spend a good part of the day queuing.

That is hard on equipment in ways the odometer hides. Idle hours, constant low-gear work, hard braking and tight yard turns age a clutch, a cooling system and a set of rear ends far faster than the mileage suggests. A Harris County day cab with modest miles has usually done real work.

It also means fleets here turn over on contract cycles. A Barbours Cut drayage contract that moves to another operator puts sound tractors on the market at once, which is why so many of the calls from this part of the county are about several trucks rather than one.

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 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. Day cabs and road tractors off the Barbours Cut Container Terminal work. Tankers, flatbeds, dump trucks, mixers, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Harris County is the deepest truck market in the state, and a seller 1.18 miles from a working yard is about as well placed as a seller gets.

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 hours are high and the miles are low.That is the normal shape of a Harris County drayage tractor and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours.
• It is one of several.Then tell us about all of them. Around the Barbours Cut Container Terminal a contract ending usually means more than one truck, and we would rather look at the group.
• 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.

Beyond a drayage contract moving, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. An owner-operator who has had enough of the gate queue.

Yards between the Union Pacific tracks and the Barbours Cut gates usually have one sitting.

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.