We buy trucks in Menomonie

One industrial-sand registration sits under this city, carrying 9 employees on the MSHA register under Covia Solutions LLC. Nine people is a small crew, and the operator behind it is not a small firm — Covia Solutions holds rows in other towns across this state as well.

The commodity string says sand, industrial, not elsewhere classified, and it understates what it is. This is Northern White, and it is the operator names rather than the commodity field that identify it: the keyword pass that finds any of it runs over operator names.

That name says where the sand ends up, and it is not near here. Covia Solutions ships it a long way, and a movement of 1,100 miles is not a truck movement, so at the mine end the truck work is transload and local distribution — short, repeated, loaded one way — rather than the last-mile wellsite running that defines the other end of the same trade. Stated as inference from the distance, since nothing we read gives this operation’s modal split.

Short and repeated is the harder duty cycle. It is brakes, frame and driveline rather than engine hours, and the odometer understates all three. The commodity does its own damage on top: Northern White is prized for crush resistance, and the property that makes it good proppant is the property that wears equipment out.

One thing the calendar settles either way, and it is not in this trade’s favour. Under a frozen road declaration a legally licensed vehicle may run to 98,000 lb without a permit, up from the ordinary 80,000 lb, normally from late December to late February or early March.

Eligibility is written by cargo and it is short: the § 348.175 list is abrasives or salt for highway winter maintenance, and peeled or unpeeled forest products cut crosswise, which does not include wood chips. Stone and sand are not on it. Travel is not allowed on state highways carrying posted weight restrictions, and no local road is authorised unless the local highway authority declares its own — so the allowance you read about in December may not reach the road outside your gate.

Wis. Stat. §§ 348.175 and 348.15(3). Information, not legal advice.

None of that reaches the paperwork, which is the short part. 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 provision can move without anybody deciding to move it. Under Wis. Stat. § 342.065, where an insurance claim payment including any deductible exceeds 70 percent of a vehicle’s fair market value, the insurer must notify the department in writing within thirty days. The trigger is the payment rather than somebody’s repair estimate, and a purchaser of a salvage vehicle not already titled as one must apply promptly after delivery for a salvage certificate of title. So the paperwork can be ahead of the truck, which is the reason to check it before a sale rather than after.

Wis. Stat. § 342.065. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the day it was read.

None of that changes what we are interested in. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the damp sand out of Covia Solutions itself. Tankers off the dried Northern White. Road tractors and day cabs on the longer legs. Flatbeds, work trucks and pickups off crews. Whatever you drive, the offer does not 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. All of those are ordinary in a place this size, and bringing it to us is an option too if that suits your week.

• 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.
• How am I paid?Cash or electronic payment. That is the whole list.
• Can I run heavier once the ground freezes?Not on sand. The declaration takes a legally licensed vehicle to 98,000 lb without a permit and the list of who may is abrasives, salt and forest products cut crosswise.
• The tank hauled silica out of Covia Solutions for years.Then say so. Northern White abrasion history follows the commodity rather than the odometer, and it is the single most useful thing you can tell us about that tank.
• Do I have to bring it to you?No. 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.
• 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.

None of those is really the reason for the call. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A contract that ended and never got replaced. A pneumatic tanker that carried Northern White standing on a yard beside Covia Solutions with no run booked, insured every month and not 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.