We buy trucks in Smithville

The rail yard here is operated by Union Pacific and its coordinate lies 0.35 miles from the centre of town. Measured across all twenty-five rail-yard rows in this lane, that is the shortest distance between a town and the yard filed under it — a third of a mile, which is to say the yard and the town are the same place.

Three sand and gravel rows also attach here, all of them recording Bastrop County. Two of those three, though, sit 51 miles apart from each other while both claiming that same county, which no county in this state is wide enough to allow.

So one row is unusually precise and two are demonstrably confused, in the same town, in the same list. This page is built on the yard, whose distance is checkable, and it does not build an argument on the sand rows.

That 0.35 miles is closer than most people park from their own front door. A truck serving this yard is working town streets for the whole of its loaded run, on signals and tight corners rather than on any kind of open road.

Those conditions put the wear in the places nobody checks. Clutch, cooling system and brakes take it; the odometer takes almost none of it. A day cab out of Bastrop County with very low mileage may have done a great deal of work, and the hours are the number that tells you.

It also means selling is straightforward. Equipment this local belongs to people in the town, and the conversation is with the person who drove it rather than with a fleet office somewhere else.

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 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. Day cabs and road tractors off the yard work. End dumps and bulk trailers off the sand ground, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Bastrop County sits inside the Austin market, so a seller 0.35 miles from a working yard has a deep local market as well as our offer.

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.
• The mileage is almost nothing.That is exactly what a 0.35-mile working radius does to an odometer, and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours instead.
• My paperwork says a different county.Two of the sand rows filed under this town disagree with each other by 51 miles while both saying Bastrop County, so confusion here is the record’s fault, not yours. It makes no difference to the sale.
• 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.

Beyond a hauling 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.

Yards within the 0.35 miles between the town centre and the Bastrop County tracks 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.