We buy trucks in Llano

Two operations attach to this town and both are small. The Llano Sand Plant is a surface operation working industrial sand under Collier Materials, and it reports 5 employees. The Bluffton Quarry works crushed and broken stone under Chanas Aggregates LLC, and it reports 2.

The two coordinates sit 13.38 miles apart. The nearest active state aggregate registration to the quarry is 2.3 miles away, which can mean a lapsed registration, a point recorded elsewhere, an inaccurate coordinate or an operation outside the definition; the research did not separate those.

The interesting part is the geology underneath. This is the Llano Uplift, a granite province, the same one that runs under Marble Falls and Brady. Granite weathers to a distinctive coarse sand, so an industrial-sand operation sitting on a granite province is coherent rather than odd.

Coherent is not confirmed. That this particular plant works granite-derived sand was not established, and we are not going to assert it because the story fits.

Chanas Aggregates carries a second row here as well, a construction-sand mine 8.71 miles from the quarry.

Those headcounts are the whole reported figure, not a shift.

Two employees at one pit and five at the other is what the federal mine records carry. Whatever the hauling arrangement behind them — and it was not established — an operation reporting numbers like that replaces equipment one unit at a time rather than in fleet lots.

The Bluffton Quarry and the Collier Materials plant are 13.38 miles apart, and that spread is most of what we buy in country like this: a single dump truck coming off a small pit, a flatbed that carried the loader, a pickup that belonged to the job rather than to a fleet. One truck at a time is the normal transaction here and it is not a smaller job for us than ten.

Three rows across one county under two operators, with 8.71 miles between the two Chanas Aggregates rows alone, is a thin scatter rather than a district. The trucks that work it run county roads more than highway.

Both of those pits load under the same 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, and there is no commodity variance of the kind Georgia and Kentucky grant.

Texas grants permits instead, each written for a named industry: ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. Nothing on that list covers aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products, so both an industrial-sand hauler and a stone hauler here fall back to the general permit.

The general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, with registration to 80,000 lb, a fifteen thousand dollar bond, and 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 against each other and must never be added.

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.

The Texas salvage line is the most seller-favourable on file. A truck is branded salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds its actual cash value immediately before the damage — effectively the whole value, with no percentage in the test at all. It is a two-part test as well: there must be damage to, or a missing, major component part, and thirteen of those are enumerated.

Repainting and sales tax come out of the repair figure before the comparison is made, which no other state on file does. On an old truck with cosmetic damage that is the difference between a brand and no brand.

Emissions inspection is not a step for a diesel truck in Texas. The state exempts diesel vehicles outright.

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 of that iron is iron we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Bluffton Quarry and the sand plant, flatbeds, lowboys for the loader, day cabs for the longer runs out of the county.

Then the rest: rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

The Collier Materials plant and the pits around it sell one truck at a time, and one truck is a transaction we do every week.

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 is one truck, not a fleet.That is the normal call here. A single unit off a two-person pit gets the same process as ten off a yard.
• It has run county roads its whole life.Ordinary around the Bluffton Quarry and the Chanas Aggregates ground. Then the miles are hard-won and the suspension shows it. Tell us and we will read the wear against the roads rather than against the number.
• 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 pit winding down, 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 Bluffton Quarry and the Chanas Aggregates ground 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.