Lampasas County
One quarry, two operator names, and nobody has reconciled them
The quarry here is the Black Rock Ranch Quarry, sixteen people on the federal mine register, in Lampasas County. Sixteen is a real crew and it means steady loaded traffic off the ranch ground.
The rock is graded. The state highway department’s rated-source catalogue for bituminous work lists a Black Rock Ranch Pit under Big Creek Construction, producer code 2314102, at Surface Aggregate Classification B, with an abrasion figure of 27 on the Los Angeles test and a magnesium sulfate soundness figure of 20.
The two registers do not agree on who runs it. The federal mine record names the operator as a materials company; the highway catalogue names Big Creek Construction. Both are recorded here because both were read, and the research did not reconcile them. That is a normal state of affairs between two registers kept for different purposes, and it is worth knowing before anyone treats either name as the whole answer.
So the stone leaves on a schedule, and the trucks show it
That grade is what puts the traffic on a schedule. Rock rated for surface courses is called off against paving work, so the trucks running out of the Black Rock Ranch ground do the same loaded leg repeatedly across a season rather than ranging.
Those legs punish specific parts. Loading shock, a soft pit floor and short brake-heavy descents put hours into a chassis while the odometer barely moves, so a Lampasas County dump truck with low miles has usually done more work than the number implies.
It also means equipment reaches the market on contract dates. A Big Creek Construction job that ends without another behind it puts sound trucks up for sale together.
Texas weight law
The plain federal figures, and what a permit does and does not lift
Those loads run to figures that are worth knowing before a sale rather than after one.
Texas sets gross at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb. Those are the plain federal numbers, and Texas adds no commodity variance to them.
A permit moves the axles rather than the gross. Under the state’s size and weight schedule a permitted single axle rises to 25,000 lb and a permitted tandem to 46,000 lb, while ready-mixed concrete trucks run 23,000 and 46,000 with no permit at all. Whether a permit also lifts the gross was not established, and this page does not state that it does.
The permit layer is written by named industry — ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, super heavy single-trip — and there is no permit named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products.
Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Texas Department of Motor Vehicles size and weight limits. Information, not legal advice.
Texas paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
Beyond the weight and the permit, 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 is worth knowing because it runs further than any other state on file. Texas brands a truck salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds the actual cash value before the damage — effectively one hundred per cent, against eighty 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.
The calculation also leaves out repainting and sales tax, which no other state on file excludes. For a truck whose damage is mostly cosmetic that moves the answer a long way.
Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.
What we buy here
All of that equipment is equipment we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Black Rock Ranch Quarry 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.
Lampasas County sits between the hill country and the central corridor, so a seller here has more than one direction to move a truck in.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Lometa
- 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 paperwork has a different company name on it.That happens around the Black Rock Ranch Quarry, where two registers carry two operator names. It is not a problem for us; we just need the title to match the seller.
- 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. Lampasas County and the ranch roads run the same pattern.
Why people call
Beyond a paving season ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one contract that outlived the contract.
Yards around the Black Rock Ranch Quarry and across Lampasas 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.