Marathon County
A pit filed six and a half miles from the town it is filed under
One crushed-stone registration sits under this city, carrying 6 employees on the MSHA register — and its coordinate is 6.70 miles from the city centroid, which is a long way for an attachment. The nearest incorporated place centroid really is this one; the pit is simply out in the county.
Within ten miles the Wisconsin bridge file records 86 structures, of which 1 is posted for load and 1 is coded below legal loads, the nearest 7.22 miles away and town-maintained. Marathon County posts 4 of the 121 bridges it maintains and its towns 9 of 205.
The one restriction takes a legal load whole
That single restricted structure is rated 42.5 metric tonnes, and a legal 80,000 lb truck grosses 36.3. So it is above the line: a full legal load crosses it whole, and no payload figure is published for this node at all.
That is a different statement from an empty circle, and the difference is the point. An empty circle means nothing was found. This means something was found, measured, and turned out not to constrain a loaded truck. Of the four pits measured alongside this one, the others keep about 15.1 tonnes, about 7.0, and about 2.1 — the tightest floor in this state. This one keeps the lot.
Read it as an upper bound even so. It is a minimum inside a ten-mile circle, and at 64.1 per cent of nodes measured this way a tighter crossing lies somewhere between 10 miles and 20 miles out.
Seasons
The exemption list is every town’s to write, and the statute names nobody
Which leaves the calendar as the thing most likely to stop a loaded truck here, and the statute behind it names nobody. Wis. Stat. § 349.16(1) lets the officer in charge of town, city or village highway maintenance, the county highway commissioner or committee, or the department for state highways impose a special or seasonal weight limitation where a highway would likely be seriously damaged because of weakness of the roadbed due to deterioration or climatic conditions, and § 349.16(2) requires signs giving reasonable notice.
Then § 349.16(3)(a) lets that same authority exempt vehicles carrying certain commodities it specifies, or set different limits for them, where the exemption is reasonable and necessary to promote the public health, safety and welfare. The statute names no commodity at all. Each authority sets its own list, so whether a spring posting lets a loaded truck through is decided locally, and there is no statewide answer to give. Several other states put the equivalent answer in a statute you can read. This one puts it in the records of each town.
Wis. Stat. §§ 349.16(1), (2) and (3)(a). Information, not legal advice.
Wisconsin paperwork
We need a title — unless it never had one
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.
Where a truck carries a brand, this state treats it as a stage rather than a dead end. A salvage vehicle takes a certificate saying so, and once it passes inspection by a certified state salvage title inspector the brand becomes rebuilt salvage and registration plates may be issued against it. A truck that has been through that is an ordinary thing to be selling, not something to explain away.
Wisconsin DMV, title brands. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the day it was read.
What we buy here
None of that changes what we are interested in. Log trucks and timber rigs off the forest work Marathon County runs on. Dump trucks and aggregate haulers off the stone 6.70 miles out. Flatbeds, road tractors and day cabs on the runs south. Work trucks and pickups off crews. Whatever you drive, the offer does not change. We buy all of them.
This is a small city with the pit well out in the county and nothing large close, so start from the option that needs nobody to drive out: we buy it remotely and arrange the tow. We also come to you and drive it away, or come to you and tow it, and bringing it to us is an option if you are heading that way anyway.
We buy complete trucks. If the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Small things — a missing bumper — are fine.
Straight answers
The questions we get asked in Mosinee
- 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.
- Is there a bridge that will stop the tow?No. The one restricted crossing inside ten miles is rated 42.5 metric tonnes, which is above what a legal load grosses — it takes a full truck whole.
- Can I run heavier once the ground freezes?If you haul forest products cut crosswise, yes. The frozen road declaration takes a legally licensed vehicle to 98,000 lb without a permit, and across Marathon County that is a cargo the roads actually carry.
- 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.
Why people call
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 log truck standing beside a shed in Marathon County 6.70 miles out from the middle of town, insured every month and not turning a wheel since the last cut.
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.
Wisconsin seasonal weight and title rules read from the Wisconsin Statutes in August 2026 — verify with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation before acting on them. Special and seasonal weight limitations at Wis. Stat. § 349.16; title brands from the Wisconsin DMV. Node facts from MSHA’s Mine Data Retrieval System, the FHWA National Bridge Inventory 2025 delimited files (items 21, 41, 64 and 70) and the U.S. Census 2024 Gazetteer. Wisconsin has no state-rules file in this repository and none was written for this batch.