We buy trucks in Quanah

The mine record here carries three people and is filed as a crushed-stone operation in Hardeman County. The state environmental register has an active aggregate production registration 0.01 miles from that same coordinate — the same patch of ground to within fifty feet.

The two entries do not agree on much else. They carry different operator names, and the state registration records the material as gravel, sand and soil rather than as crushed stone. So the federal filing calls it one thing and the state filing calls it another, at the same point, and the registration runs to an expiry in December 2026.

This is the reverse of the usual problem on these pages. Elsewhere in Hardeman County terms, the two registers are miles apart and agree on the material; here they are 0.01 miles apart and disagree about what is being dug. Both are recorded and neither is corrected by guesswork.

That disagreement has a direct consequence for a seller, and it is not an academic one. Gravel, sand and soil are three different loads and they wear a body three different ways — soil is heavy and sticky, sand is abrasive, gravel is neither and hard on a tailgate.

So the useful question is not what the register says was dug on that 0.01 miles of Hardeman County ground; it is what your truck actually hauled, and how often. The liner, the tailgate seal and the hoist pivot tell that story better than a filing does.

It also means a small three-person operation is exactly the kind whose equipment we see. There is no fleet behind it, just trucks belonging to the people who ran them.

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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the pit work, farm trucks and grain hauls, flatbeds, day cabs and road tractors, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the pickups that go with a crew.

Hardeman County is quiet country up on the northern line, so collecting a truck here is usually something we arrange rather than something you drive. The 0.01 miles between the two registers is the whole of the local geography anybody agrees on.

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 dirt and gravel both.That is exactly what the register on this Hardeman County ground records, and it is not a problem. Tell us the mix and we’ll ask about the body.
• 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, and out here that is usually the answer. We buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or come to you and drive it away, or come and tow it, or you drive it to us. The 0.01 miles between the two records is the least of anybody’s problems.

Beyond a pit contract going quiet, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one job that outlived the job.

Places out across Hardeman County, and around the 0.01 miles of ground both registers point at, usually have one behind the barn.

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.