We buy trucks in Point Comfort

The industry here is one plant and it is very large: the Formosa Plastics works covers 2,500 acres on the bay in Calhoun County. Around it the central list records two liquid bulk terminals, a multi-purpose dock and a general cargo dock with its own rail connection.

The plant is also the subject of the only court record attached to anywhere in this lane. In December 2019 a federal judge approved a settlement of fifty million dollars over the discharge of plastic pellets into Lavaca Bay and Cox Creek, requiring zero discharge of plastic waste, penalties running until discharges cease, and funding for remediation.

It is reported as the largest settlement ever reached in a Clean Water Act suit brought by private citizens. That figure is taken here from reporting of the court record rather than from the consent decree itself, which was not retrieved, and it is stated with that qualification rather than without it.

That scale is what puts trucks on these roads. A Formosa Plastics works covering 2,500 acres with its own docks runs on tankers, vacuum trucks, service bodies and crew transport for maintenance and turnaround work, and a settlement requiring remediation adds contract work on top of the ordinary cycle.

Those trucks accumulate hours far faster than miles. Short repeated legs inside a plant fence, long waits at gates and racks, and constant low-speed manoeuvring age a clutch, a cooling system and a set of brakes while the odometer stays modest. A Calhoun County plant truck with low mileage has usually worked hard.

It also means equipment changes hands on contract dates rather than on condition. When a turnaround or remediation contract ends and the next does not follow, sound trucks reach the market together.

Those loads run to figures that are worth knowing before a sale rather than after one.

Texas sets gross at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb. Those are the plain federal numbers, and Texas adds no commodity variance to them.

A permit moves the axles rather than the gross. Under the state’s size and weight schedule a permitted single axle rises to 25,000 lb and a permitted tandem to 46,000 lb, while ready-mixed concrete trucks run 23,000 and 46,000 with no permit at all. Whether a permit also lifts the gross was not established, and this page does not state that it does.

The permit layer is written by named industry — ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, super heavy single-trip — and there is no permit named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Texas Department of Motor Vehicles size and weight limits. 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. Tankers and vacuum trucks 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.

Calhoun County is a working industrial coast rather than a quiet one, so a truck around the Formosa Plastics gates is straightforward to move.

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 hours are high and the miles are low.That is the normal shape of a plant truck in Calhoun County and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours.
• It is one of several.Then tell us about all of them. Around the Formosa Plastics works a contract ending usually means more than one truck, and we’d rather look at the group.
• 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 between the Formosa Plastics gates and the Lavaca Bay docks 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.