We buy trucks in Mont Belvieu

The terminal recorded against this town belongs to Targa Resources, but the thing that makes this place what it is sits below it rather than on it. The Barbers Hill salt dome holds caverns with a nameplate capacity trade sources put at roughly 422 million barrels.

The share is the striking figure. About 68% of all cavern storage capacity in the state is here, under one town in Chambers County. That is not a large share of a small thing; it is most of a very large thing.

The processing above ground matches it. Energy Transfer states that its fractionation capacity here passed a million barrels a day once its eighth fractionator entered service in the third quarter of 2023, which is the plant end of the same business the caverns serve.

That concentration is what puts trucks on these roads. A storage and fractionation complex of this size does not run on pipelines alone: it runs on tankers, vacuum trucks, service bodies and crew transport, all day, every day, for maintenance and turnaround work that never really stops.

Those trucks live a hard life in a specific way. Short repeated runs inside and between plants, long waits at gates and racks, and a great deal of low-speed manoeuvring put hours and heat into a driveline while the odometer stays modest. A Chambers County tanker with low miles has usually worked.

It also means the equipment turns over on turnaround schedules rather than on wear. When a contractor finishes a Targa Resources or Energy Transfer job and the next does not follow immediately, sound trucks reach the market together.

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 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. Tankers off the plant work, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Chambers County sits inside the deepest industrial truck market in the country, so a seller here is not short of a route to market. The Barbers Hill work draws contractors from well beyond the county line.

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 hauled product, not dirt.Then it has had a different life and we’d like the history. Around the Barbers Hill plants that is the normal shape and it does not change whether we buy it.
• The hours are high and the miles are low.That is the normal shape of a Chambers County plant truck and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours.
• 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.

Beyond a turnaround contract ending, 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 Barbers Hill plants and out across Chambers County usually have one sitting.

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.