We buy trucks in Port Arthur

The Motiva refinery here is reported as the largest oil refinery in North America, expanded to process up to 654,000 barrels of crude a day. It got there by debottlenecking rather than by new construction — finding capacity inside plant that already existed.

The numbers need a caveat, and it is worth giving it plainly. A separate source states total throughput of 730,000 barrels a day, which is a different measure from crude capacity, and the two have not been reconciled. Capacity also rose by 14,500 barrels a day year on year through operating efficiency.

The rail side is a single row: the Port Arthur yard, operator Kansas City Southern, 3.90 miles from the centre of town, and the only one attached to the city.

A refinery of that size does not generate long-haul freight so much as constant short movement: contractors, maintenance crews, vacuum work, and tankers moving product a few miles at a time.

It is turnaround work that defines the pattern. A plant shutdown brings in fleets for weeks and then releases them, so equipment here runs hard in bursts and then sits.

Both halves show up on a truck. The bursts wear the driveline and the sitting finds the seals and the batteries, which is why a Jefferson County truck often reads worse cold than it runs warm. The Kansas City Southern yard is 3.90 miles out and it is the only one attached to the city.

All of that plant traffic runs under one statutory ceiling, whatever it is carrying.

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 one 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. So 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 comes with 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 those 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 rules, 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, not pure arithmetic: there must also be damage to, or a missing, major component part.

The statute lists thirteen major component parts, and the calculation 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 iron is iron we buy. Tankers off the Motiva work, both liquid and pneumatic. Vacuum trucks and service bodies off the maintenance side. Day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Most of it works between the plant and the Kansas City Southern yard, or up and down the channel road.

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 hauled product in and out of the refinery.Not a problem in itself. Plenty of what we buy around the Kansas City Southern yard did exactly that. Tell us what it carried and whether the tank has been cleaned.
• It has sat since the last turnaround.Common here and not a disqualifier. Tell us how long and whether anything came off it.
• 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. Whichever suits the truck and your week. Jefferson County plant work and the Kansas City Southern yard are where most of these come from.

Beyond a turnaround crew standing down, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A back that has had enough of the plant road.

Yards across Jefferson County and along the channel road usually have one waiting.

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. Jefferson County turnarounds set the rhythm, and the Kansas City Southern yard sees the trucks that come off them.