We buy trucks in Mineola

The yard attached to this town is operated by Union Pacific and its coordinate sits 2.67 miles out, in Wood County, attached here by the nearest-centroid fallback rather than by lying inside the place.

The coordinate deserves a caveat that most records do not get, and the source gives it. Rail-yard positions in this dataset are the mean of the vertices of a track line rather than a surveyed facility point, and all 2,459 rail-yard rows were derived the same way. So the point marks roughly where the track is, and says almost nothing about where a gate, a scale or a loading dock might be.

The catchment figure carries the same warning. The 75 miles attached to yards of this type is a constant applied across the whole dataset and flagged as an estimate, not something measured here. And what the yard handles was not determined at all.

Those caveats stack into a useful shape rather than into nothing. A yard 2.67 miles outside a small Wood County town, reached on county roads, produces short heavy local runs whether or not anybody can point to the exact gate.

That kind of running is what ages equipment invisibly. Loaded pulls of a few miles, repeated all day, put hours and heat into a driveline while the odometer barely moves, so mileage is a poor guide to a truck out of here.

It also means we ask rather than assume. Where a truck actually loaded, how far it ran and how long it idled are things the owner knows and the dataset does not, and those answers matter more here than the coordinate does.

Those loads meet a weight rule that is short to state and easy to get backwards.

The ceiling is the plain federal one: 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on a single axle, 34,000 lb on a tandem. Texas grants no commodity variance of the kind Georgia and Kentucky write for named cargo.

The general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, with registration to 80,000 lb and a fifteen-thousand-dollar bond. What comes with it is liability: the permit holder answers for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges. Pennsylvania allocates road cost the same way, through a bond per linear mile and an excess-maintenance agreement; Ohio instead puts a signposting duty on the mine operator. Texas and Pennsylvania both put the road on the carrier.

And the two percentages run against each other. On a load-zoned road the permitted weight drops ten per cent below the maximum, so the permit’s five per cent on gross and the zone’s ten per cent reduction are not to be added.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Chapter 623 permits. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond what a truck weighs, what it is called on paper is the other thing worth settling early.

We need a title unless the truck never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement and there is a bonded route where no title exists, so this is a step rather than an obstacle.

The salvage test is a comparison: repair cost, including parts and labour, against the vehicle’s actual cash value immediately before the damage. What Texas leaves out of that repair cost is unusual. Repainting comes out, and so does sales tax on the total. Missouri excludes airbags, tires, sound systems and hail damage; Kentucky excludes airbag reinstallation; Texas is the only state on file to exclude paintwork.

For a truck whose damage is mostly cosmetic, taking the paint out of the numerator moves the answer a long way from the brand.

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. Day cabs and road tractors off the yard work. Log trucks and timber rigs, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Wood County sits inside reach of the north-east Texas markets, so a truck 2.67 miles from the Union Pacific line here is not hard to move.

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 miles are low for the age.That is the normal shape of a truck running short local legs in Wood County and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours if the truck records 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 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 2.67 miles out to the Union Pacific line makes no difference.

Beyond a hauling 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 along the 2.67 miles of Wood County road out to the Union Pacific line usually have one parked up.

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.