Sell your semi truck for cash in Richmond the easy and convenient way

Five rail yards sit within four miles of the middle of this city. Four of them are CSX Transportation — Acca 3.77 miles out, Clopton 3.30, Fulton 3.51 and South 3.14 — and one is Norfolk Southern, 1.39 miles out and carrying the city’s own name. What each of them handles could not be established from any source we read, so we are not going to characterise them.

The rock is better documented. South Richmond Quarry runs twenty-four people and is on VDOT’s Materials Approved List as quarry code 05_4021_Q, granite, coarse and fine aggregate both approved in 2018. The Boscobel Plant runs twenty-three under code 05_4001_Q, also granite, coarse approved in 2018 and fine in 2019 — though Boscobel sits 14.89 miles from the middle of town, which puts it well out into the county rather than in the city.

That inner quarry sits in the densest bridge network we have measured in this state. Within ten miles of it the national bridge file records 557 structures — the largest count anywhere in Virginia, and inside the twenty-five densest we have measured in any state.

Thirteen of those are coded below legal loads, which is a low share at 2.3%, and the share is not the problem. The nearest of the thirteen is 0.30 miles from the pit. Its lowest commercial rating works out at around thirteen and a half US tons of rating vehicle, and an empty tandem dump eats nearly all of that on its own. What the crossing will take on top of the truck is something like a ton and a third of stone, against the twenty-five or so a legal 80,000 lb load carries.

A restriction three hundred yards from a working pit is not a routing detail. It is a turn made a different way every trip for years, and it is the sort of thing that quietly shapes a truck’s whole life without ever appearing in its mileage.

Five of those thirteen structures are county-maintained, and that is a much stranger sentence than it looks. Virginia keeps almost all of its own bridges: the state maintains 12,085 of the 14,143 structures on file, and counties maintain 243 — 1.7% of the total.

Those 243 sit in six localities out of 133. Buchanan County holds 118 and Henrico County 97, which is 88% of the state’s entire county tier between two places, with Arlington on 23 and three more localities holding a handful. Everywhere else in Virginia the county tier is empty.

So this is one of the two counties in the state where asking about county-maintained roads is a real question. Henrico posts five of its 97 county structures below legal loads, about 5.2%; Buchanan, out in the coalfield, posts 26 of 118, or 22%. Two counties holding nearly the whole tier, differing from each other by a factor of four. Anyone quoting a single Virginia county figure is averaging two numbers and a hundred and twenty-seven zeros.

Both of those figures sit under the same state limits. Va. Code § 46.2-1122 puts a single axle at 20,000 lb and gross at 80,000 lb, § 46.2-1127 puts a tandem at 34,000 lb, and the interstate limits are identical to the highway ones.

Then § 46.2-1126 sets gross by the distance between the first and last axle rather than by one figure: 34,000 lb across two axles at four to seven feet, and for three or more consecutive axles 34,000 at eight feet, 42,500 at nine and 43,500 at ten, climbing with spacing until six axles across fifty-one feet reach the full 80,000. Any fraction of a foot rounds up.

Granite is where that table is least forgiving, because dense rock reaches the axle limits with the body nowhere near full and the weight ends up concentrated over a short wheelbase. And none of it is the operative number anyway when the crossing half a mile down the road takes a fraction of a legal load. The statute sets the ceiling; the bridge sets the trip. There is a five per cent commodity permit at § 46.2-1129 and it is written for Virginia-grown farm and forest products, which crushed granite is not.

Gross and single axle at Va. Code § 46.2-1122, the tandem at § 46.2-1127, the spacing table at § 46.2-1126 and the commodity permit at § 46.2-1129. Information, not legal advice.

That is the rule, and everything after it is a fix rather than a category. A lost title has a counter replacement. Where none exists there is a bonded route. Neither one stops a sale.

One Virginia provision is one to know about, precisely because it is a door you can walk through by accident. Under § 46.2-1600 a vehicle is salvage where its owner — not only an insurer — determines it to be so and applies for a salvage certificate. The same section lets an owner have a vehicle declared nonrepairable.

Only one other state on file gives an owner a voluntary salvage brand, and none gives them the nonrepairable one. In Virginia you can put your own truck beyond repair on paper. Sometimes that is exactly the right move. It is a decision rather than a formality, and it is not one to make on a phone call with somebody who is buying the truck.

Va. Code § 46.2-1600. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the day it was read.

Those rules cover trucks we are glad to buy. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the Boscobel Plant and the South Richmond granite. Mixers off the concrete work. Day cabs and road tractors off the CSX and Norfolk Southern yards. Flatbeds, box trucks, straight trucks and rollbacks out of the trades. Service bodies, work trucks and pickups off crews.

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

We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, or we buy it remotely and arrange the tow with nobody visiting at all. In a metro this size all of those are routine, and you are welcome to bring it to us instead if that is easier.

• 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 has run short loaded trips its whole life.Then the odometer understates it and we would rather know that from you. Brakes, frames and drivelines do the work on that pattern. It does not change whether we buy it.
• Do you come out past the city?Yes. Henrico County either side, down into Chesterfield County, and west towards the Boscobel Plant. Distance has never stopped a sale.
• How am I paid?Cash or electronic payment. That is the whole list.
• Somebody said I should apply for a salvage certificate.In Virginia an owner can. Think about it before you do, because it is not a formality and it is not reversible on a whim. Ask us and we will tell you plainly what it changes.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement; where none exists there is a bonded route.

Neither of those questions is really the reason for the call. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and never got replaced. A tri-axle standing in a yard off the Henrico County line that has not moved since a job finished, 14.89 miles from the Boscobel Plant, with insurance going out on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

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.