We buy trucks in Uvalde

Five crushed-stone operations sit under this town. The main quarry is much the largest at 50 employees; Black Spur Quarry runs 9, the Davenport Ranch Cline Quarry 8, and two smaller rows record 4 and 3.

The Davenport Ranch row is the interesting one. It is rated by the state highway department as a basalt source under Colorado Materials, and basalt is not what most of Texas quarries — the state runs overwhelmingly on limestone.

All of them are on a register by law. Under the state administrative code the operator of every quarry, sand pit or gravel pit must register each extraction location, which is why the paperwork here is unusually complete.

That basalt is harder than the limestone around it, and hardness is exactly what a road surface is bought for.

It means loads from the Davenport Ranch Cline Quarry travel further than loads from an ordinary pit, because a rated surface aggregate is worth hauling past the nearer quarry that cannot match it. Longer legs, more highway, more miles on the clock.

The Black Spur Quarry end of the county runs the ordinary short pit pattern instead. Two different truck lives in one county, and the odometer means something different on each.

Both patterns run under one statutory ceiling, and neither basalt nor limestone is 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. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the main quarry and the Leona Rock pit. Day cabs and road tractors for the longer basalt legs. Flatbeds, lowboys, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

A 50-employee quarry and four small ones turn over very different fleets, and Colorado Materials ground runs its own schedule.

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 box is beaten up but the driveline is good.Normal on a Black Spur Quarry truck and not a problem. Tell us about both.
• It ran long hauls out of the basalt pit.Then it has real highway miles. Colorado Materials loads travel further than ordinary aggregate and we take that into account.
• 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. Whichever suits the truck and your week.

Beyond a quarry 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 around the Leona Rock Quarry and the Black Spur Quarry 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.