We buy trucks in St. Jo

Two operations attach to this town and they are different trades. The Martin Quarry works crushed and broken limestone with 5 employees, under J.R. Thompson Inc — the same operator that holds the Mitchell Quarry over at Muenster, about fifteen miles away across the county line.

The other is an industrial sand operation trading as Texas Frac, LLC, reporting 22 employees. It is the larger of the two by headcount and it attaches here by nearest centroid at 8.14 miles; the coordinates of the two sit 8.07 miles apart.

The sand row’s county string reads Cooke. Its coordinate reverse-geocodes to Montague County. The central cross-check flagged that and left it unresolved rather than correcting it by guess, because the node list is read-only to the sessions that read it.

That is the mirror image of what the Muenster page carries. There, one operator genuinely works two counties. Here, one row merely claims to.

That second operation is where a page could go wrong, and the research said so in terms.

These counties sit in or beside the Barnett Shale, and the operator names say frac sand. That is as far as the evidence goes. Whether this sand serves the Barnett, ships west to the Permian, or feeds construction markets around the metroplex was not established for any operation in the group, and North Texas is within trucking distance of all three.

So there is no wellsite wear story on this page. In the Permian and the Eagle Ford that duty cycle is established and pages there say so; here it would be an assumption dressed as a fact, and a seller reading it would be told something about their own truck that nobody actually knows.

What is established is distance. Dallas–Fort Worth is 60 to 80 miles from most of this group, which makes these genuine highway runs rather than metro-fringe work, whichever direction the load is going.

Both trades load under the same statutory ceiling, whatever the destination turns out to be.

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.

Texas grants permits instead, each written for a named industry: ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, and super heavy single-trip. Nothing on that list covers aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products, so both operations here fall back to the general permit.

That general permit adds ten per cent on the axle and five per cent on gross, with registration to 80,000 lb, a fifteen thousand dollar bond, and liability for actual damage to load-restricted roads and bridges. On a load-zoned road the permitted weight is ten per cent less than the maximum, so those two percentages run against each other and must not be added.

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.

The Texas salvage line runs further in the seller’s favour than any other state on file. A truck is branded salvage only where the cost of repairs exceeds its actual cash value immediately before the damage — effectively the whole value, with no percentage in the test. It is a two-part test as well: there must be damage to, or a missing, major component part, and the statute enumerates thirteen.

Repainting and sales tax come out of the repair figure first, which no other state on file does. On an older truck with cosmetic damage that is the difference between a brand and no brand.

Emissions inspection is not a step for a diesel truck in Texas. The state exempts diesel vehicles outright.

Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091; TCEQ vehicle emissions programme. 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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Martin Quarry, sand trailers and flatbeds off the Texas Frac ground, day cabs and road tractors for the highway legs toward the metroplex.

Then the rest of it: lowboys, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Two operations 8.07 miles apart in two trades turn over more equipment than a town this size would suggest.

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, so it must be a wellsite truck.Not necessarily, and we will not assume it. Around Montague County the destination is not established either way. Tell us where it actually ran.
• It worked pits in two different counties.Common where the Martin Quarry operator and others like it work more than one face. Bring whatever paperwork names each entity and it goes faster.
• 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 buy it remotely and arrange the tow, come to you and drive it away, come and tow it, or you can drive it to us. Whichever suits the truck and your week.

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

Yards around the Martin Quarry and across Montague County 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.