We buy trucks in Liberty Hill

The stone operation here is the Armadillo Pit, carrying thirteen people on the federal mine register. Thirteen is a proper working crew: loaded trucks leave on a schedule rather than when somebody has time.

The pit does not stand alone. Wilco Aggregates runs the Armadillo Pit here and Brauer Pit 1 over at Jarrell, about fifteen miles apart, both inside Williamson County. One operator, two faces, one county.

That second pit is the fact worth having. A single-pit operator sells trucks when the pit slows; a two-pit operator moves them between sites first, and only sells when the whole business changes shape. The equipment therefore stays in the county longer and arrives on the market in groups.

Those fifteen miles between the two Wilco Aggregates sites are the trucking, and they are not highway miles. Loaded aggregate moving between pits and out to jobs in Williamson County runs on county roads built for lighter traffic.

That kind of running concentrates wear in particular places. Brakes and rear ends take the load on short grades, the suspension takes the rough surface, and the odometer records a number that badly understates the work. A dump truck off the Armadillo Pit with modest miles has usually earned them the hard way.

It also means the fleet turns over on the operator’s timing. When a two-pit business consolidates its haul equipment, several sound trucks reach the market at once rather than one at a time.

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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Armadillo 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.

Williamson County is one of the fastest-building counties in the state, which means a seller here is inside a live market for used equipment rather than looking for one.

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 ran between two pits, not one.That is the normal history around the Wilco Aggregates sites and it is fine. Tell us where it worked and we’ll 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. 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. The Armadillo Pit roads and the rest of Williamson County run the same pattern.

Beyond an aggregate 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 Armadillo Pit and up toward the Brauer Pit 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.