We buy trucks in Laguna Park

The pit here is the Greenwade, three people on the federal mine register, with its coordinate 1.9 miles from the centre of town. Three people is a small pit by any measure.

The pit is not the whole operation, though. Conners Crushed Stone and Conners Construction run the Greenwade here in Bosque County together with two more sites over in Coryell County — the Cowart Mine and the Dippel Quarry. Three sites under one regional operator.

That is the fact worth having, because it changes what a three-person headcount means. A small site inside a three-site group is not a marginal operation running one truck; it is one face of a business that moves equipment and crews between pits as the work moves.

That structure shows up in the trucks. A operator working the Cowart Mine and the Dippel Quarry as well as the Greenwade shifts haul equipment between them, so a truck registered at one pit has usually worked the roads to the others as well.

Those are county roads rather than highways, and they wear a chassis accordingly. Loaded runs between Bosque County and Coryell County put the work into suspension, brakes and rear ends, and the odometer under-reports it the way it always does on short heavy legs.

It also means equipment comes up for sale on the group’s timing rather than one pit’s. When a three-site operator consolidates, sound trucks reach the market together.

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 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 Greenwade and the Conners Crushed Stone 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.

Bosque County is quiet country, so collecting a truck here is usually something we arrange rather than something you drive. That is normal and it is built into how we work.

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 has run more than one pit.That is the usual history around the Conners Crushed Stone sites and it is fine. Tell us where it worked and we will ask the right questions.
• 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 often the easiest answer. We can buy it remotely and arrange the tow, come to you and drive it away, come and tow it, or you can drive it to us. The 1.9 miles out to the Greenwade makes no difference either way.

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 Greenwade in Bosque County, and out toward the Dippel Quarry, usually have one parked up.

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.