I disagree. Your DMV is the place to go. They are the one's who will be giving you a title/legal ownership registration. Circumventing them in some tricky dicky way could get you in trouble. There is no such thing as a lost title. If it's lost as an excuse from a seller, they simply go to DMV, give them the VIN and an ID. If they are the owner and lost the title, they give them a duplicate for $4.
Third party "get you a title" company's are crooked. Getting a title in a state in which you do not reside, is probably crooked, with a crooked address. Any other way than what the DMV in your state requires, is crooked. Bring them whatever honest paper you have, tell them the honest story, and do it the honest way or don't buy a truck without a title. You can get a bum living under a bridge to give you a notarized Bill of Sale, so what? Sooner or later you could lose the truck. A bonded title is an insurance policy that get's your purchase price back but you may still lose the truck. Are you going to buy and insurance policy that covers all the repair/restoration work you did in three years? No.
I've had two friends who have had the Sheriff come and take their hot rods. Doesn't matter how many years later it is.
Martin's idea is a good one. But I will bet the owner can't do that because they don't have any documentation either. The will have funky excuse no. 326. (Grammpa, who died, willed it to my sister who got ate by an alligator and her son sold it to a guy who never paid for it and we repossessed it with a lien on it and then we switched the vin tag from my uncles truck that burned up. So here's your Bill of Sale we got in Vermont)
