We buy trucks in Pecan Plantation

The stone operation attached here is the Nemo Plant, three people on the federal mine roll, with its coordinate 7.68 miles out. What makes the entry worth reading closely is that it carries three different place names, and none of them is wrong.

The plant is named for Nemo, which is a community in Somervell County. It attaches to this place, which is in Hood County. And the row carries a county string of Johnson, which the federal reverse-geocode of its own coordinate agrees with. So the name points at one county, the page at a second, and the coordinate at a third.

The state environmental register does not settle it either. No active aggregate production registration lies within a mile of the coordinate; the nearest is 2.9 miles away, which could mean a lapsed registration, a point recorded elsewhere, an inaccurate coordinate, or an operation outside the definition. This research did not distinguish between them.

Those three names are not a filing error so much as a description. A pit sitting where Hood County, Somervell County and Johnson County come together is served by trucks that cross a line every trip, and the operator does not much care which side the load is on.

That is ordinary work and it wears equipment ordinarily: county roads, short loaded legs, brake-heavy grades and a great deal of the day at low speed. The odometer records the miles and nothing about the loading, so a low-mileage dump truck out of the Nemo Plant ground has usually earned more than the number shows.

The operator is worth a note as well. The same company holds two more rows in this research, at Goldsmith and at Midland, both out in the Permian Basin — so this is a west Texas outfit working a pit at the edge of the metroplex, and its equipment moves accordingly.

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 the weight rule, the paperwork is where Texas differs most from its neighbours.

We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route; neither stops a sale.

Texas brands salvage only where repair cost exceeds the actual cash value immediately before the damage, and actual cash value means market value — effectively a hundred per cent, against seventy-five in six states, seventy in Arkansas and sixty in Oklahoma. It is the highest bar recorded on file, and unlike the percentage states it carries a second condition: the damage must involve a major component part.

The separate nonrepairable class has five routes into it, including one — sold for export only — that appears in no other state on file. New Mexico is the only other state with such a class, and there a single test defines it.

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 Nemo Plant work. Flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Hood County sits just outside the metroplex, so a truck here is a short run from one of the deepest markets in the state.

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.
• My paperwork says a different county.That happens constantly around the Nemo Plant, where the name, the page and the coordinate point at three counties. It makes no difference to the sale.
• It has worked out west as well.That is the normal history for equipment belonging to an operator with Permian Basin rows, and it is not a problem. Tell us where it ran.
• 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 7.68 miles out to the pit ground changes nothing.

Beyond a 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.

Places around Hood County and out toward the Nemo Plant usually have one behind the shop.

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.