Would this truck be good for hauling 3/4 cars?

We run 7 and 8 car haulers cross-country. Just purchased rig #3 last week. We have a F550 w/ a 4-car trailer making local pickups to transfer to our yard, then load up the semis to take them to AZ/NM/CA and, sometimes, NV. The semis pick up customers coming the other way, drop them in the yard, then the Ford takes them for the "last mile" to the customer. The F550 sometimes will make a run to Atlanta and Jacksonville; it really helps if the driver making the Jacksonville run has a TWIC card (which I do) since most of our business there involves the ports.

The car-hauling market is a bit oversaturated with small, fly-by-night haulers (at least, here in Florida) so you have to have a business model which takes that into account. So far, this works pretty well for us. And it really helps if you can get a couple of regular customers (like car sales lots, for example); they've come through for us even when Central Dispatch has got tooo many vultures hanging around.

As far as your tractor is concerned, I see nothing wrong so far; in fact, I think you're making a smart decision there. The vast majority of people are running these 3 and 4 car trailers with standard dualies (like F350's). The trucks can (and do) pull the load but your truck will do it with ease while those guys will strain a little bit. Some won't admit it but you can really wear down a pickup over time pulling loads like these. That's why I wouldn't use anything less than a F450 or a Ram 5500; they may look like the other trucks but they also tend to have heavier suspensions and frames. I haven't seen a huge crackdown but DOT has been known to occasionally cite those dualies for exceeding their axle ratings; that won't happen with anything above a F350/Ram 3500.

 

Check out this forum autoexpeditor.com It is specific to car hauling and has a lot of good information. I ran a 1 ton and a 3 car wedge starting in 2011. I did pretty well but I decided to get out of hauling cars about a year ago because of the drop in rates. From what I have been reading here and there it does not look like it is getting much better. Most people on that forum would tell you to go with a single drive axle semi with a sleeper rather than a medium duty. You will save a ton of money on hotel bills by having a sleeper.

 

It's a buyers market on class 8 trucks right now. And in another couple months will be even better. Gonna be lots of fleet trade ins going for tens of thousands less than they did a year ago.

Happens every time the market hits a bad spell that last more than a couple months. 2015 was the worst year for freight since 09. And no improvement expected for the first half of 16.

 

The thing is you miss out in the financial advantages of a class 8 opposed to a class 6/7. I mean the lower class trucks are not meant to be OTR or heavy haul trucks, they have a built in end of life about 600k miles, where the class 8 is made to be a million mile truck. On top of that, the costs when compared to each vehicle spread out during the life time of the part is less on the class 8 more often than not because those parts are made to be used longer with better reliability than the comparable part on the class 6/7.

As mentioned before in other threads, there are a lot more trucks chasing owners than owners chasing trucks, so I would take the same steps to do the due diligence in order to ensure you get a good truck.

 

Get you a single axle int 8600 ext cab with a 390-425 ism and you will be happy. oh you can thank me later.

 

In this area, I have seen these wedge car trailers with a chain drive in the middle. There are ball hitches that can be attached to the chain. They use the chain to load utility trailers. Two, three sometimes four utility trailers. It doesn't interfere with loading cars

 

I ran an '06 4x4 5500 GMC. It had a service truck body on it and weighed around 24k lbs. For all intents and purposes, its a very similar truck. My personal experience with the truck was generally fairly positive. Biggest issue I had with the truck was it tended to wander a little more than I would have liked. The Duramax had decent power but the RPM's would be up around 3k at 75 mph. The engine wiring harnesses were another weak spot as well as the air cleaner housings cracking. The tilt hood makes engine servicing much easier than a pickup as well.