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Rust belt map

Where the vehicles are, and where stations can send them.

Tap a county

Pinch to zoom. Drag to move. Connecticut is shaded grey: Census 2024 switched it to new planning regions that this map's shapes don't have. Its totals are in the lists below.

Key areas

States

Read this before trusting the map

Vehicles are not susceptible vehicles

The shading counts every household vehicle (Census ACS 2024 5-year, table B25046). It can't tell a pickup from a sedan or a new truck from a rusted one. Pennsylvania and New York have their own truck layers (PA by weight class, NY by body type and age).

"Old pickups" means 10+ years

The NY layer counts registered pickups with model year 2016 or older (DMV registrations, 2026-10-29). Pickups are mostly built on a frame, but this doesn't separate them from the few that aren't. NY's data also keeps registrations that expired up to two years ago, and SUVs are left out because NY lumps crossovers (no frame) into the same body type.

Salt exposure isn't shaded

The 22 states are the NHTSA 2015 salt-belt list plus Virginia. How hard each county is salted isn't in this map. USGS publishes gridded road-salt estimates we haven't loaded.

Inspection rules are state by state

Green states run periodic safety inspections (sourced). Amber is unsettled or unconfirmed. Grey means no safety inspection found, but the Great Lakes states rest on a Wikipedia-only check.

What would fix it. Pennsylvania truck registrations by county and model year (a PennDOT request, drafted in research/2026-10-29/PENNDOT-RTKL-REQUEST.md), registration data from the other inspection states, and the USGS salt grid.