We buy trucks in Longview

Five rail yards are filed under this town and they sit within 1.17 miles of one another, running from 2.52 to 3.27 miles out from the centre.

Four of the five carry a carrier tag in the name and one does not. Union Pacific holds most of them — the tagged Union Pacific row at 2.77 miles, the yard row at 2.52, and the storage-in-transit row at 3.27.

One row is worth pointing at directly. A yard whose name is tagged for one railroad is recorded with the other as its actual operator: the tag says one thing and the operator field says another. The research left it as found rather than picking a side, and so does this page. A name is not a fact about who runs a place.

Those five yards inside 1.17 miles mean the drayage legs are measured in minutes rather than hours.

It is the same pattern as a big intermodal city compressed into a small one: constant coupling, low-speed manoeuvring in tight yards, and a great deal of idling that never reaches the odometer.

A day cab that spent years running between yards 2.52 and 3.27 miles apart can be worn out at a mileage a highway truck would call barely used, and that is worth saying before somebody judges it on the dash.

Those short legs sit under the same statutory ceiling as a coast-to-coast run.

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 one 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 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 comes with 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 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 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, not pure arithmetic: there must also be damage to, or a missing, major component part.

The statute lists thirteen major component parts, and the calculation 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.

All of that iron is iron we buy. Day cabs and road tractors off the Union Pacific yard traffic. Flatbeds and box trucks off the warehouse end of the same runs. Dump trucks, rollbacks, straight trucks, tankers, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Five yards inside 1.17 miles is a lot of gate traffic for a town this size, and Gregg County turns equipment over accordingly.

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 and the miles are low.Normal for a yard tractor working five rows between 2.52 miles and 3.27 miles out. Not a problem — tell us the hours.
• The engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• 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. Whichever suits the truck and your week.

Beyond a lease ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. One tractor too many after a contract finished.

Yards across Gregg County and around the Union Pacific rows 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.