Hale County
A yard inside the town, on the other big western railroad
The rail yard here is operated by BNSF Railway, and its coordinate lies 1.60 miles from the centre of town, inside the place. It is the only rail-yard row attached here.
The operator is worth naming because it is the less common of the two in this part of the lane. Most of the yards attached to these towns belong to the other big western system; this one and one deep in the east of the state are the exceptions.
What moves through it was not determined from any source read for this research. Hale County is obvious country for an obvious guess about what a yard on the high plains handles, and that is exactly why this page does not make one.
So the roads here are section roads, and the runs are long and straight
That geography is the thing that actually shapes a truck here. The high plains are laid out on a section grid, so a run to a yard 1.60 miles inside town comes off long straight roads rather than off winding county blacktop, and the loads travel a long way between stops.
Those conditions are easier on a chassis than short hill work and harder on an engine. Steady high-load running at constant speed puts hours on a driveline honestly, so out here the odometer is a better guide than it is at a quarry — which is worth saying, because it is the opposite of the advice on most of these pages.
It also means equipment is spread across a wide area. A truck in Hale County belongs to a farm or a small operator forty miles from the next one, and it is sold by the person who ran it.
Texas weight law
Who pays for the road, and two percentages that pull apart
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.
Texas paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
What we buy here
All of that equipment is equipment we buy. Grain hauls and farm trucks off the section-road work. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the pickups that go with a crew.
Hale County is the market centre for a wide stretch of the plains, so a seller 1.60 miles from a working yard has real local competition for a truck as well as our offer.
Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Plainview
- 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 high.Out here that is normal and it is not held against a truck. Hale County runs are long and straight, which is easier work than the mileage suggests.
- 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 1.60 miles into town is the short end of any trip out here.
Why people call
Beyond a harvest contract ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one season that outlived the season.
Places out across Hale County, and in along the 1.60 miles to the yard, 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.