We buy trucks in Somerville

The rail yard here is operated by BNSF Railway, and its coordinate lies 0.52 miles from the centre of town, inside the place. Among the twenty-five yards in this lane only two sit closer to their own towns.

That closeness is more striking here than elsewhere because of the scale of what is around it. This is a small place in Burleson County, and a yard half a mile from the middle of it is a large part of what the town does rather than one facility among many.

What moves through it was not determined from any source read for this research, and is recorded that way. It is the only rail-yard row attached here.

That proximity is the fact with consequences. When the yard is 0.52 miles from the middle of a small town, the people who work it live in it, the trucks that serve it are parked in it, and the whole operation runs on a few streets.

Trucks in that pattern accumulate hours rather than miles — low gears, frequent stops, long idling — and their odometers understate their working life badly. Asking about the hours rather than the mileage is the single most useful thing anybody can do with a Burleson County day cab.

It also means a sale here is a local conversation. There is rarely a fleet office involved; the owner drove the truck, knows what it did, and is the person we talk to.

Those loads run to figures that are worth knowing before a sale rather than after one.

Texas sets gross at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb. Those are the plain federal numbers, and Texas adds no commodity variance to them.

A permit moves the axles rather than the gross. Under the state’s size and weight schedule a permitted single axle rises to 25,000 lb and a permitted tandem to 46,000 lb, while ready-mixed concrete trucks run 23,000 and 46,000 with no permit at all. Whether a permit also lifts the gross was not established, and this page does not state that it does.

The permit layer is written by named industry — ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, super heavy single-trip — and there is no permit named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Texas Department of Motor Vehicles size and weight limits. 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. Day cabs and road tractors off the yard work. Farm trucks and grain hauls, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the pickups that go with a crew.

Burleson County sits between the central corridor and the coast, so a seller 0.52 miles from a working yard has more than one direction to send a truck.

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 very low for the age.That is what a 0.52 miles working radius does, and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours if the truck records them.
• 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. Burleson County is easy enough country to collect from.

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 0.52 miles between the town centre and the Burleson County tracks usually have one parked up.

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.