We buy trucks in Rice

The operation attached here is Patriot Mining and Materials, twenty people on the federal mine register, carried as a surface operation working industrial sand, with its coordinate 8.63 miles out in Navarro County.

Twenty people is a substantial pit — the second largest mine headcount in this lane — and the obvious next sentence is the one about the oilfield. This page does not write it. The operator names in this north Texas group suggest frac sand, but whether these operations serve the shale under the metroplex, ship west to the far basins, or simply feed metropolitan construction was not established for any of them.

The geography allows all three, which is exactly why the question stays open. The Barnett Shale runs to roughly five thousand square miles under and around the metroplex, and the metroplex itself is sixty to eighty miles from most of this group — genuine highway distance rather than a metro-fringe run. Three plausible destinations, no evidence, no assertion.

That gap matters more than it sounds, because the wear story follows the destination. In the far western basins the last-mile wellsite pattern is established — hours far ahead of miles, queuing rather than driving — and writing that story about a Navarro County truck would be an assumption dressed as a finding.

So the honest position is that the duty cycle here is not established, and the questions become the owner’s to answer. Where did it load, where did it deliver, how much of the day was spent waiting, and what body was on it — the Patriot Mining record answers none of those.

What can be said either way is what the material does. Sand is abrasive by design, so on an end dump the liner, the tailgate seal and the hoist pivot take the wear, and on a pneumatic tank the blower and the product lines do. Those parts tell the truth about a truck regardless of where it went.

Those loads run under one statutory ceiling, and stone is conspicuously absent from the relief.

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 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. 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 carries 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 the 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 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. End dumps and bulk trailers off the Patriot Mining 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.

Navarro County sits within a straightforward run of the metroplex, sixty to eighty miles up the road, so a seller here is inside a deep market rather than at the edge of one.

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 I could not tell you where it ended up.That is a fair answer and it matches the record, which does not establish where this Navarro County sand goes either. Tell us the body and the hours instead.
• The tank or the bed is worn inside.That is abrasion and it is normal for sand. Around the Patriot Mining ground it is the usual finding, and we’ll ask about the liner, the seals and the pivot.
• 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 8.63 miles out to the pit 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 along the 8.63 miles of Navarro County road out to the Patriot Mining ground 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.