We buy trucks in Moody

The stone operation attached to this town carries two people on the federal mine roll and sits on the Coryell County side of the ground. Two people is the smallest a working pit gets.

Small does not mean unrecorded. Under chapter 342 of the state Administrative Code, the operator of every quarry or pit in this state must register each extraction location with the environmental commission ten business days before extraction begins, and renew that registration every year — regardless of how small the operation is.

That rule is the reason a two-person pit shows up in a state register at all, and it is worth knowing when you are reading these pages. A small entry is not evidence of a small industry nearby; it is evidence that the threshold for being listed is zero.

That headcount tells you who owns the equipment. Two people do not run a haulage business; they run a pit and whatever trucks the pit needs, and those trucks are owned by the same person who drives and maintains them.

Those trucks age unevenly. Seasonal work on Coryell County ground means stretches of hard hauling and stretches parked, and long idle periods are harder on seals, batteries and brake systems than steady running is. None of that shows on an odometer, and none of it is recorded anywhere — the Administrative Code registration covers the ground, not the equipment standing on it.

It also means selling one is a short conversation. There is no fleet manager in the way, and the person who answers the phone is the person who knows what the truck has done.

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 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.

All of that equipment is equipment we buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the pit work, farm trucks and grain hauls, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the pickups that go with a crew.

This is farming and quarrying country between the central corridor and the Coryell County line, so a truck here is easier to move than the quiet roads suggest. The Administrative Code register will tell you where the pits are; it will not tell you whose truck is parked behind which barn, and that is the part we ask about.

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 has sat through a season or two.That is common on a small Coryell County operation and it is not a disqualifier. Tell us how long it sat and we’ll ask about the right things.
• It is the only truck I have.Then this is a one-truck conversation, which is most of what we do. A two-person Coryell County pit is not a fleet and we do not expect it to be — the Administrative Code registers the pit, not a haulage business.
• 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.

Beyond a pit season ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one job that outlived the job.

Places around Moody and out toward the Coryell County line usually have one behind the barn. A pit whose Administrative Code registration lapses at the year end is one of the ordinary ways a truck comes free.

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.