We buy trucks in Palestine

The rail yard here is operated by Union Pacific and its coordinate lies 0.60 miles from the centre of town — inside the place, and among the closest handful of yard-to-town distances in this lane.

Half a mile is close enough to change how a town works. Loaded trucks reaching a yard at that distance are on residential and business streets for most of the run, not on a bypass, and the traffic pattern belongs to the town rather than to the county.

What the yard handles was not determined from any source read for this research, and is recorded that way rather than assumed from the region. It is the only rail-yard row attached here.

That 0.60 miles is a working condition, not a statistic. A tractor that spends its life running half-mile legs between a yard and a customer never gets warm, never gets out of the low gears, and spends far more of its time stationary than moving.

Those conditions age particular parts. Clutches, cooling systems and brakes take the wear; the odometer records almost none of it. So a low-mileage day cab out of Anderson County is worth asking real questions about rather than assuming is barely used.

It also means the equipment stays close to home. Trucks working a yard inside the town tend to be owned locally and sold locally, by the person who ran them.

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.

Anderson County sits between the eastern timber country and the central corridor, so a seller 0.60 miles from a working yard has more than one direction to send a truck.

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 mileage is very low for the age.That is the normal shape of a truck running half-mile legs to a yard inside Anderson County. 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 0.60 miles across town is neither here nor there.

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 within the 0.60 miles between the town centre and the Union Pacific tracks 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.