We buy trucks in San Saba

Four dimension-stone operations work here and together they employ 41 people. Greater Texas Stone runs 11 on the Rocking U. Jacobs Stone Products runs 7 on dimension limestone. Ramirez Stone runs 4 on the Miller row. Imperial Products Supply runs 19 at the largest of them.

Dimension stone is not crushed rock. It leaves as slabs and blocks cut to size, which means flatbeds and cranes rather than dump bodies, and a load that is worth protecting on the way.

Imperial Products Supply also runs a quarry in the Lueders district about 200 miles north, which is the single operator string tying the two Texas stone districts together.

Those four operations sit well away from a metro — Austin roughly 90 miles south-east, San Antonio about 110 south — and unlike the Lueders district there is no downstream stoneyard town here to take the material a short distance.

It makes this a genuine long-haul stone district. A flatbed loaded here is going somewhere, and the miles go on the odometer honestly rather than hiding in a queue.

That is worth knowing when you sell one. A San Saba flatbed has usually earned its mileage on the highway, and highway miles are the kindest kind.

Those long runs sit under one statutory ceiling, and dimension stone is not on the relief list.

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. Flatbeds and step decks off the Jacobs Stone Products and Ramirez Stone work. Day cabs and road tractors for the run to Austin. Dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Because there is no metro next door, buying remotely and arranging the tow is a normal way to do this here rather than a fallback.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• Do you really come out this far?We do, and often we don’t need to. Plenty of trucks out here are bought remotely and towed. We can also come to you and drive it away or tow it, or you can drive it to us.
• 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 deck is chewed up from stone loads.Decking is a repair, not a disqualifier, and it does not make a truck incomplete. Tell us about 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.
• How far out do you come?All of San Saba County and out toward the Lueders district, where Imperial Products Supply runs its other quarry. Distance has never stopped a sale. Jacobs Stone Products and Greater Texas Stone both load flatbeds rather than dump bodies.

Beyond a quarry contract ending, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck that stopped earning and has been sitting behind a shed since.

Yards around Greater Texas Stone and the Imperial Products Supply 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. Imperial Products Supply runs a second quarry 200 miles north, and equipment moves between districts.