We buy trucks in Porter Heights

The operation here is a drying plant carried as a surface operation working industrial sand, two people on the federal mine roll, operator of record Liberty Materials, with its coordinate 3.14 miles out in Montgomery County. A sand pit and plant sits 2.75 miles out on the other side.

It belongs to a group of four rows spread across Montgomery County and Liberty County, north-east of the city. What that group is for was not established, and this is the point at which most pages would guess.

The temptation is to write the oilfield story, because industrial sand in this state usually means proppant. But this is not the Permian and it is not the Eagle Ford: this is the timber and coastal-plain belt, the operator names say speciality and industrial sand rather than frac, and with a construction market of that size 40 to 50 miles away, building sand is at least as plausible. Whether any of the four ships proppant was not established, and this page does not assert it in either direction.

That refusal to guess has a practical consequence, and it is a useful one. Because the destination is unknown, the honest thing to describe is the equipment rather than the route — and the two trades the Liberty Materials group might be serving run different bodies.

Construction sand moves in end dumps and bulk trailers. Dried speciality sand moves in pneumatic tankers. What they share is what the material does: sand is abrasive by nature, so the liner, the tailgate seal and the hoist pivot are the wear items on one, and the blower, the product lines and the aeration pads on the other. Those are the things worth telling us about.

It also means we ask rather than assume. Nobody in Montgomery County needs a wellsite wear story written about their truck when the record does not support one, and the questions that matter — what it carried, how long, in what body — are ones the owner can answer.

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. End dumps and bulk trailers off the Liberty Materials kind of work, pneumatic tankers, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the pickups that go with a crew.

Montgomery County sits on the edge of the deepest truck market in the country, 40 to 50 miles from the middle of it, so a seller here has real options.

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 sand, but not for the oilfield.That is quite likely around here, and it is why this page does not claim otherwise. Tell us what it actually carried and in what body.
• The tank is worn inside.That is abrasion, and it is normal for sand. Around the Montgomery County plants it is the usual finding. Tell us which commodity and we’ll ask about the liner, the seals and the pivot rather than guessing.
• 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 3.14 miles out to the plant changes nothing.

Beyond a sand 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 Liberty Materials plants and the Montgomery County line 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.