We buy trucks in Tacoma

Twenty-nine operations are attached to Tacoma in the node list, and the shape of them is unusual. Six rail yards belong to the Tacoma Municipal Belt Line Railway — a railway the city itself runs — and their names say what they handle: a container yard 2.63 miles from the centroid, an export yard at 2.56, a log yard at 3.45, and two more at 3.12 and 2.44 miles.

A log yard next to a container yard is two different trucks. One is bunks and stakes and a short leg off the woods; the other is a chassis and a box and a turn measured in hours. Both are here, on the same few miles of road.

Then six roll-on roll-off berths, which means car haulers and anything else that drives aboard rather than being lifted, seven intermodal ramps, four liquid bulk terminals for tanker work, and a Union Pacific yard out at 3.97 miles. Union Station sits 1.08 miles from the middle of town and is the closest of the lot.

The node list at docs/nodes/node-list.json and the rail-yard sidecars under docs/facts/node/. Distances are straight-line to the place centroid, not drives.

Two of those names do not survive a careful read. The row named Fife sits 3.97 miles out and its coordinate lands inside Fife city, which carries a page of its own — name, containing place and page all agree against the filing.

The second is odder. A row 1.89 miles out whose name carries the parenthetical UP has a carrier field reading BNSF Railway. It is the eighth tag-against-field disagreement recorded in that slice and none of the eight has settled which of the two the tag is naming, the carrier using the line or the one that owns it. Eight instances and no resolution is the finding.

Neither changes what we buy or where we come out to. It is here because a page that quotes distances to a hundredth of a mile owes you the rows it does not trust.

Whatever comes off those berths, the ceiling on it is a statute question, and the statute does not answer with a number.

Washington’s maximum gross is 105,500 lb. The statute bars more than 20,000 lb on any single axle, and lets two consecutive sets of tandem axles carry 34,000 lb each where the first and last axle sit 36 feet or more apart, with the groups in between governed by the bridge formula.

Then it opens up again. The department of transportation by rule for state highways, and a local authority for a road under its own jurisdiction, may extend that table to 115,000 lb. So the operative figure is an administrative rule or a local ordinance rather than anything printed in the code, and no page can honestly hand you one number. Whether the 105,500 survives on the interstate is not established by the files behind this page, and we are not going to guess at it.

Seasonal limits work the same way, and Washington writes down something most states leave implied. A local authority may restrict a road that rain, snow or thaw would seriously damage — and the ordinance is not effective unless and until the signs are up and being maintained. The sign is the rule. Which roads are posted in a given week is not in any file we hold.

RCW 46.44.041 on axle loads and the extension to 115,000 lb, and RCW 46.44.080 on local seasonal restrictions. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond the weight rules, the paperwork is that one sentence.

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 of those stops a sale.

One Washington duty has a clock on it where most states’ have none, and it is the one to know about if a truck has been written off. Where a vehicle is destroyed or declared a total loss, the owner — or the insurer, once it has settled — has fifteen days to report it to the department and surrender the title. The statute names the fifteen days itself, which is unusual.

RCW 46.12.600. Information, not legal advice.

None of that narrows what we will look at. Day cabs and road tractors, log trucks and timber rigs, tankers, car haulers, flatbeds, rollbacks, service bodies, dump trucks, box trucks and straight trucks, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Box trucks and straight trucks are not a Pierce County thing in particular — they are everywhere. They are on the list because we buy them here too.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them. The belt line yards, the log yard 3.45 miles out and the berths behind them are where most of them turn up.

• 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 engine is out of it. Is that different?Yes, and that is the line. A tired engine is fine; an engine that has been pulled out and sold means we can’t buy the truck.
• 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. If it was ever declared a total loss, the fifteen-day reporting duty is the department’s, not a bar on selling it.
• It is a car hauler. Is the trailer part of the deal?Tell us what the deck is and roughly what it has carried and we’ll take it from there. A hauler with worn decking is a normal thing to sell, not a complication.
• Do you come out to Pierce County?Yes, all of it and the towns around it — the belt line yards and the log yard 3.45 miles out included, and Union Station 1.08 miles in. We come to you and drive it away, we come to you and tow it, we buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you drive it to us.

Those questions come up because the reasons for selling are mostly personal. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A haul off the docks that ended. A truck sitting behind a shop since somebody stopped driving it, costing insurance every month it does not turn a wheel.

Across Pierce County the same trucks come up for the same reasons, whether they worked the log yard 3.45 miles out or the container yard 2.63 miles the other way.

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.