We buy trucks in Charleston

This is a coal valley and the record shows it plainly. The Blue Creek underground mine is about 7 miles east with 108 people and its preparation plant about 7.5 miles with 21. The Witcher Creek surface mine is about 9 miles south-east with 44, and a second Blue Creek plant about 10 miles south-east. A Guard base sits about 3 miles from the middle of town and the South Charleston yard about 6 miles west.

Further out the same trade repeats. Marmet Dock and Quincy Dock are both about 13 miles south with 11 and 20 people, the Bull Creek plant about 13 miles south-west in Boone County with 14, the South Hollow plant and loadout about 15 miles south with 60, and the North Eagle Mine about 15 miles south with 122 — the largest workforce among them. Boone North No. 2 is about 16 miles south with 50.

Those river docks are the point that shapes the equipment. Coal here does not go far by road: it goes from a mine or a preparation plant to a dock or a loadout, and then onto the water or the rail. Marmet, Quincy and Little Creek are all inside about 13 miles, and the Dickinson and Institute yards about 12 and 12 miles out.

So the legs are short and enormously heavy, repeated all day, up and down creek roads. That is the hardest kind of work a driveline does, and it is nothing like the mileage an odometer suggests. You know better than we do what a few seasons of it does to a truck.

Those short heavy legs run on a parallel weight regime with its own designated roads. Under W. Va. Code § 17C-17A-2 a coal resource transportation road is one the Department of Transportation has designated as safe and sufficient for vehicles hauling coal to carry a greater gross and axle weight — up to 120,000 lb, with a five per cent variance on top. That is 126,000 lb on a designated coal road, against 80,000 lb on the interstate beside it.

The permit tiers under § 17C-17A-5 are by configuration and each carries its own annual fee: a single unit truck with one steering axle and two tandem axles at 80,000 lb for $100; the same with three tridem axles at 90,000 lb for $60; a five-axle tractor-semitrailer at 110,000 lb for $300; and six or more axles at 120,000 lb for $500. Axle loads may in no event exceed the maximum allowable for the minimum axle spacings as determined by the Division of Highways.

So the truck in your yard may well have spent its life legally carrying half again what the same truck could carry a state away. That is a fact about the equipment, and it is worth telling us.

W. Va. Code §§ 17C-17A-2 and 17C-17A-5. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

When one of those trucks finally sells, this state does something at the counter that catches people out. Under W. Va. Code § 17A-10-10, when the owner of a registered vehicle transfers title or interest, the registration of that vehicle EXPIRES. The original owner keeps the registration plates, must immediately notify the commissioner of the transfer on the form provided, and delivers the certificate of registration.

Plates off, notification in — and the duty is on the seller rather than the buyer. It is a small thing that becomes a large one months later if nobody did it. On a transfer to a licensed dealer the dealer executes the notification in triplicate, signed by the transferring owner.

Beyond that the rule is one sentence: we need a title, unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A counter replacement if it is lost, a bonded route if there never was one. Neither stops a sale.

W. Va. Code § 17A-10-10. Information, not legal advice.

The mines and the docks run different iron, and whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change — we buy all of them. Coal haulers and dump trucks off the Blue Creek and Witcher Creek operations. Day cabs and road tractors on the dock and yard runs. Aggregate haulers, flatbeds, box trucks, service bodies and the pickups and work trucks that follow the rest of it around.

Most of it works inside about 16 miles — the Blue Creek mine 7 miles east, the docks at 13, and the North Eagle Mine 15 miles south in Boone County.

• Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete, though — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. A missing bumper is fine. A missing driveline is not.
• It has been on coal roads its whole life. Does that put you off?No. It tells us what the truck has been doing, which is not the same as putting us off — a designated coal road here allows up to 120,000 lb plus a five per cent variance, so these trucks work hard by design. Send photos all the way round and the engine from both sides.
• What if I can’t find the title?We need a title — unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. If it’s lost, there’s a counter replacement. If there was never one to lose, there’s a bonded route. Neither stops a sale.
• There’s still money owed on it. Now what?That’s a payoff and a lien release, and it’s the slow part rather than the hard part. Tell us up front and we’ll work it into the paperwork.
• How do you pay?Cash or electronic payment, whichever you would rather have.
• Do you actually come up the creeks?Yes. 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. The Blue Creek end is about 7 miles east and the Boone County mines about 15 to 16 miles south.

Beyond the trucks themselves, the reasons repeat, and in a coal valley they repeat hard. A DOT physical didn’t go the way it used to. A haulage contract that filled the year for nine years went when the mine it served did. The truck is just sitting beside a shed, and every month it sits is another month of insurance on something that isn’t turning a wheel.

The lots up toward the Blue Creek plant 7 miles east, and down the river past Marmet Dock and Quincy Dock 13 miles south, hold a fair number of trucks in exactly that position.

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.