We buy trucks in Lamesa

The federal mine records carry two industrial-sand operations here, and they report the same headcount. Alpine Silica-Lamesa is a surface operation working industrial sand, operator of record Alpine Silica, LLC, and it declares 20 employees. OnCore 2B works the same commodity under OnCore Processing, and it declares 20 as well.

They are not next door to each other. The two coordinates sit 13.54 miles apart, on opposite sides of town.

The node list carries two more sand rows here on top of those, in a different sand business: a construction-sand plant under U.S. Silica Energy Company, and a common-sand pit. Four sand rows, one town, two trades that a reader might treat as one.

Dawson is a Permian county, and the research places it in the second ring of the in-basin sand district rather than at its centre. The market is Midland and Odessa, about twenty miles apart from each other and a run from here.

That one commodity moves three genuinely different ways, and the three are not variations on each other.

This is the Permian Basin and the loads leave three ways. Sand boxes are sealed containers riding a standard flatbed, forklift-swapped in ten to fifteen minutes. Pneumatic tankers carry their own blower and put the sand straight into a silo at the wellsite. Belly dumps discharge by gravity in five to fifteen minutes, plus the time it takes to position. Three body styles, one material, and no preference implied by naming them.

What they share is the road underneath. Both plants sit 13.54 miles apart on the same caliche lease roads, wait time is engine time rather than odometer time, and the proppant is selected for hardness, so the abrasion question stands whichever body is carrying it. Frac sand is substantially silica by design rather than a rock that happens to contain some, which is why the federal exposure rule bites hardest at an operation like this one.

The research also recorded a caution and we keep it: this equipment is oilfield-configured, and such markets move with drilling activity. Which direction that is going is a forecast, and it is not claimed here.

Whatever the body, all of it runs under one statutory ceiling.

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 every one of them 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. So a sand hauler here falls back to the general permit and nothing else.

That general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, requires registration to a maximum of 80,000 lb, and carries a fifteen thousand dollar bond plus liability for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges. On a load-zoned road the permitted weight is ten per cent less than the maximum, so those 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 rules, the paperwork comes down to one sentence.

Everything after that sentence is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Both are ordinary and neither stops a sale.

One Texas rule runs further in the seller’s favour than any other state on file. Texas brands a truck salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds the actual cash value of the truck immediately before the damage — effectively the whole value, with no percentage in it at all, against eighty per cent in Florida and sixty in Oklahoma. And it is a two-part test rather than pure arithmetic: there must also be damage to, or a missing, major component part, and the statute lists thirteen of those.

The calculation also leaves out repainting and sales tax, which no other state on file excludes. On a heavy truck paint is a large repair line, so that exclusion moves the answer a long way.

Emissions inspection is not a step for a diesel truck in Texas. The state exempts diesel vehicles outright, so the county programme list does not reach it.

Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091; TCEQ vehicle emissions programme. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

All three of those body styles are trucks we buy. Sand boxes and the flatbeds under them, pneumatic tankers off the Alpine Silica ground, belly dumps, day cabs and road tractors for the run down to the basin.

Add the rest of what a yard holds: lowboys, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Four sand rows inside 13.54 miles turn over more equipment than a place this size would suggest.

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 but the miles are low.Normal on this work. Wait time on a lease road is engine time and the odometer never sees it. Tell us both numbers and we will read them together.
• It has been in sand its whole life.Expected on the Alpine Silica ground and across Dawson County. Proppant is selected for hardness, so we look at the abrasion points rather than being surprised by them.
• 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 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. Out here the remote route is the ordinary one.

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

Yards around the Alpine Silica ground and across Dawson 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.