Who can afford a new truck anymore?

[Jstpssng]

I guess ,we don't get much rust on the frames down here.. I have several ,and have owned several older trucks.. No rusted frames here.. I have never had a problem with rust, body ,or frame

That's why when I'm ready to buy an F250 a road trip might be in order. I can buy something older and rust free, then get it shipped up here.

 

[kenmac]

That's why when I'm ready to buy an F250 a road trip might be in order. I can buy something older and rust free, then get it shipped up here.

If you intend to make a road trip to buy.. Why have it shipped back ? Just have someone come with you & drive it back..
Now , when you get it back up there with all that salt, it may rust !

 

[sd455dan]

If you intend to make a road trip to buy.. Why have it shipped back ? Just have someone come with you & drive it back..
Now , when you get it back up there with all that salt, it may rust !

Or once it is home after a good long drive-( that's a good reliability test also) do a real good a under coating of rust preventative.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Or pull a trailer behind what you drive if possible and tow it back with your 'new' truck.

When we got the 1989 Ford F700 16' flat dump we drove to Cleveland TN in the Nissan King Cab and hauled it back on the Ford over Mount Eagle. After running it hard for 300 miles I felt better about the $2850 truck. Per the GPS it can actually hit 75 MPH at 4500 RPM but we only ran it 65-70 MPH and that is way fast but was the traffic flow on I-24.

 

[rtimgray]

Well, I just ran into the other drawback of going cheap.

My wife and I were in town Saturday afternoon running some errands. We were on our way to the pet spa to pick our dog up from a grooming session and the instruments on the truck jumped around for a couple seconds and then it died. I just managed to coast into the entrance of a church parking lot before I ran out of momentum. The problem is clearly electrical (some things that should work with the key out only work when the key is turned on and some stuff just doesn't work at all).

So a $100 tow (I couldn't tow it myself because my trailer is useless without my truck...). And since we're in the middle of a remodel and I have to get some things done before the next crew of subs come to do their bit, I had it towed to a shop instead of working on it myself.

I had a service scheduled at the dealer for the tractor and was supposed to tow it in this morning. I had to cancel that appointment, which pushes back the whole series of events that I have planned that eventually lead to me having a grapple.

These are all just inconveniences for me, but if I had to count on my truck it would be a major issue. So I completely understand why someone with critical needs and no backups would want to keep something new around.

Being cheap does have it's drawbacks - I joke that I have several vehicles that "I won't drive further away than I'm willing to walk back..."

I can see the need for a reliable vehicle for those that use them for a living, and that will usually mean new or newer-used. I've developed the luxury of having a fleet of older yet mostly reliable vehicles. If any given vehicle goes down, I've got my choice of between 4-6 other beaters that I can use. I've even got four of them that can pull a utility trailer, with varying degrees of success - and I've had to do that to get some of mine back home.

My most frustrating recent repair was to my 1996 Isuzu Rodeo. A couple of years ago, the in-tank fuel pump died. Luckily, it was in the driveway, so I could fix it at home. The worst part was draining the gas and dropping the tank - the actual fuel pump change was pretty quick and easy. Fastforward a couple of years, and I go out in the parking lot at work and the Rodeo won't start. I thought it was the fuel pump (again) and had to tow it home on a trailer. I went through all of the trouble of changing the fuel pump - and it still didn't work! Turns out it was just a loose wire in the connector. Once I got that fixed - good to go.

Anyway, I agree that a new vehicle can help for reliability purposes, but if you need ultimate reliability, you will probably have to have more than one truck (or any other item).

Good luck and take care.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Like rtimgray we have three older spare vehicles besides our four daily drivers. I joke we have spare cars instead of spare tires.

We live 20 miles from town and the ability to grab another vehicle due to a dead battery, etc is nice.

Our daily drivers are old but ready for a cross country trip if needed. We live in deer country and two of our 7 are carrying signs of deer impacts. I want good dependable vehicles but my ego is not hung up on impressing others. The wife and kids have the least miles and age by a shade and are have very good tires.

If I had more money that I could ever spend I would get me a Nissan Frontier crew cab SL less than 10 years/100K miles old for my daily driver instead of the wife's old 2000 Towncar with 170K miles but the bottom side was rebuilt two years ago. Be care what you buy the wife to drive because it may be your ride some day. I gave $6K for it in 2006 with 70K miles and the kids used it to take their driving test in and was one they learned to drive in so it has been a good vehicle. Last year we took it to Canada on a road sales trip.

Thankfully many people can and do by new vehicles. I do think for those who have $20K-$30K to tie up in a vehicle reaching for NEW could be a worthwhile consideration. At age 64 if I bought new it could still be a very good vehicle when I turned 84. We have two starting to college next year so that is my may concern as well as for the wife. The kids can fend for themselves when they wear out the vehicles we just got of them.

The working man has to have wheels but if he did not have wheels he would not have to work.

 

[kenmac]

U are 64 and have 2 just starting college ??

 

[Gale Hawkins]

U are 64 and have 2 just starting college ??

Yes. They finish HS this year and plan to start fall 2016 to college.

We have home schooled so it has been a lot of hard work but they have made me want to stay alive and active when my health was failing so. I am down over 50 pounds and in better health than 20 years ago taking no meds and eating <50 grams of carbs daily. I cut out food with natural or added sugar and all grains. That addressed my arthritis pain, IBS of 40 years and 52 other health issues.

The son should have his Eagle Scout project finished this weekend. Both have their Black Belts in Taekwondo, were on the swim team and are very active in projects helping others. The daughter is working 10 - 12 hours a week at Culver's in her spare time and enjoying that.

This next week the son will be on the road with me doing a property insurance adjuster event in Peoria IL on Monday. The daughter last year helped me with the one in WI.

I do not advise going the home school route due to the time and money but I am glad we did it. Both can wrench OK too. Some worried about their social skills but that was a non issue in our case.

I was about 30 when we got married and the kids came 17 years later. It was not planned that way but that was the way it happened. I can not think of life without them now.

I have told them if something happens to me now they are good to go. They really are good kids and should be able to bounce back from most future mistakes I think. No question their mom and I will miss them when they do leave.

 

[Parkanzky]

Like rtimgray we have three older spare vehicles besides our four daily drivers. I joke we have spare cars instead of spare tires.

We live 20 miles from town and the ability to grab another vehicle due to a dead battery, etc is nice.

Our daily drivers are old but ready for a cross country trip if needed. We live in deer country and two of our 7 are carrying signs of deer impacts. I want good dependable vehicles but my ego is not hung up on impressing others. The wife and kids have the least miles and age by a shade and are have very good tires.

If I had more money that I could ever spend I would get me a Nissan Frontier crew cab SL less than 10 years/100K miles old for my daily driver instead of the wife's old 2000 Towncar with 170K miles but the bottom side was rebuilt two years ago. Be care what you buy the wife to drive because it may be your ride some day. I gave $6K for it in 2006 with 70K miles and the kids used it to take their driving test in and was one they learned to drive in so it has been a good vehicle. Last year we took it to Canada on a road sales trip.

Thankfully many people can and do by new vehicles. I do think for those who have $20K-$30K to tie up in a vehicle reaching for NEW could be a worthwhile consideration. At age 64 if I bought new it could still be a very good vehicle when I turned 84. We have two starting to college next year so that is my may concern as well as for the wife. The kids can fend for themselves when they wear out the vehicles we just got of them.

The working man has to have wheels but if he did not have wheels he would not have to work.

We're fortunate that our daily-drivers can be very nice cars. I can't have a bunch of redundant cars laying around because my wife would not stand for it (and frankly, neither would I). So for the two of us we have our two daily-drivers (Hers a 2009 that we bought new, mine a 2010 that we bought a couple years old). I have a sports car that I bought new in 2005, an old racecar that can technically be registered for the road (I have it insured right now but I wouldn't want to drive it anywhere on public streets if I didn't really need to), and my 2003 pickup truck that I bought near the end of last year.

We can't have cars parked all over the place, so I try not to have anything that we don't use. Since we need daily-drivers, I need a pickup truck (very occasionally), and I need my sports car and racecar that's what we have. It doesn't make sense for me to have a spare pickup truck when I only use my truck a couple times a month...

My wife's car is over six years old and about 115k miles now. So it's about time to replace it and I suspect that we'll buy her a new car. When I look at slightly used options, I see prices too close to the new price to convince me to go that direction. Whereas my current daily-driver was around $75k new and I bought it with ~20k miles on it for a touch over $50k. That's a savings I'll take!

 

[Jstpssng]

Or once it is home after a good long drive-( that's a good reliability test also) do a real good a under coating of rust preventative.

Undercoating, plus it wouldn't spend much time on the road in winter. I may put a plow on it, but there is little or no salt used on my road.

It's a two day drive just to get out of the rust belt; aside from the hassles of licensing and insuring a vehicle that that far away, the expense of even a minor breakdown halfway is why I would pay to have truck hauled if I go that route. It'll be another year anyways, and I'll crunch the numbers then to see if it's feasible.

I kmow of one guy up the road who bought an F150 this spring on EBay, then flew down to drive it home. Someplace in Massachusetts it caught fire, he said he grabbed his laptop, phone, and Tom-Tom, then watched it burn.