Looking at a SFI Truck

I read Farmerbobs great thread, and keep up with it as I like how candid he is about his business. There is a difference though as im looking at a manufacturers warranty and he has an aftermarket. The downtown sucks but is part of any repair I suppose.

 

I saw a truck with SFI mudflaps today when it passed me.

It was pulling a Landstar trailer.

 

Price sounds a bit steep to me considering the used truck market now ...the 120 truck fleet I'm leased to that trades around 500k isnt buying any new trucks this year the market is so bad .

 

Right. They really don't give a poop who you pull for, as long as you make the payments. And they will tell you as much.
There's 2 groups: Schneider Finance, and Schneider Choice.
Finance don't care where the money comes from, so long as it comes.

 

Honestly, warranty companies don't make money by helpfully handing out the money you need to fix your truck. They write in the fine print all the ways they will fick you over, and if those aren't enough, they normally have some way to mitigate their costs by pushing them onto you.

I paid 5,500 for my warranty. Technically it paid for itself in shop costs, but my lost time fighting for the money and waiting for each stage of testing and arguing and finding more problems and arguing more ended up costing me more than I saved. 33 days in a hotel. 33 days lost income. Only about half of the cost of the work was covered. I paid nearly 14k, the warranty company paid about 12k.

I will never buy an aftermarket warranty again. The only way I will pay for a warranty extension is if it is an extension of the full factory warranty from the manufacturer, or a full coverage warranty extension on a rebuild of a major component. For example, if I had been offered a one year extension on the full unlimited miles warranty on my engine rebuild, I might have bought it. I got a year free, but two years would have been worth a few hundred bucks, as long as it was full coverage, unlimited miles, dealer warranty.

 

Pull a rig dig report like car fax but for trucks

 

I second the bank note ....my bank does my trucks at 7% interest and I normally put down 20% or better .....last deal I did got two trucks right at 600k with tripacs 50k out the door ....put down 10k I think the notes are around 1250.....really talk to a local bank you will do far better shopping around as a cash customer

 

A lot of it depends on your credit rating. Pull all three credit reports and make sure they are accurate. If there is any bad information in the report, contest it.

If you need help with that, there are many accounting firms that can help you. It's not hard to do, just time consuming in some cases.

If you have very little credit history, even with nothing bad in your history, it might still be hard to get a good rate because you can't demonstrate long term credit stability.

If you have a solid credit history, and you have actually built a history rather than it being mostly blank, then approach credit unions before banks for larger loans as a general rule.

All of that might still end up not being enough for a good rate of 7% or less. Many banks and credit unions will refuse to offer commercial vehicle credit (that is what you are asking for on a truck loan) for someone without 2 years provable (tax returns) history as a o/o or something closely related (towing, shop, warehouse, farm.)

All that said, in the end, if you have decent credit, most megas will sell you a used truck.

I got mine from Crete with 12k down, 7% interest, 36 months.

I do NOT suggest Crete as a used truck source though. Buy a used truck from a company that installs APUs on all their sleeper trucks. APUs save a LOT of wear and tear on DPF exhaust cleaning systems. My DPF system failed at 499700 miles, 300 miles before the end of my factory warranty. 301 miles later, and I would have eaten a 12k repair bill.