Preffered Tractor

Good luck finding anything 20+ years old that's decent and doesn't have the pre-emission and ELD exemption markup on them. There are obviously exceptions but a lot of what I see that's pre-2000 looks like hammered ####.

 

Unicorn. Either no body rust southern truck but the drive line is beat on (like the 99) or the drive lines in good shape but the rest is toast. I'd still take the 1st option, rust sucks

 

Anything with at least 475HP, a 10 speed tranny and 3.73 rears is sufficient for general freight.

I'm running that setup pulling tankers in the hills of eastern PA and it does well. I'm passing most of the others on the hills, and if I drove it a little smarter I'd get killer fuel economy, even with a 6NZ Cat. As it is, I get 6mpg in a Western Star 4900, all day, everyday.

An 18 speed? Yeah they're nice, but kinda pointless unless you're doing heavy haul stuff, or in the backwoods dragging a log trailer.

More horsepower is always a good thing though

 

My next truck, which is spec'd out by the boss, will have a 550 Cat, 18 speed, and 3.55 rears. Its a Western Star Glider, and should be on the road sometime next month.

I'm not crazy about it....

 

Mechanical cat or cummins and straight through pipes in a white Volvo.

 

Cascadia although butt ugly has more driver friendly layout than the Coronado. Been driving Cascadias 8 years. Turned down Coronado, terrible layout IMO

 

You only need to go back as far as pre2008 to avoid emissions. In 2007 it was talked about yet not yet implemented.

 

2003.5 to 2007 still has egr, and if your going back that far, I would go just a few years older to go pre eld since you are either spending top dollar for one already completely redone or are going to be dumping money into something cheap to do it yourself

 

Paid I think $18k for my 97 w9 a few years ago which was a one owner one driver truck, but I knew I was taking a year or two to rebuild it anyways.

there’s no shortage of flat out whooped trucks, but everyone wants pre emission/ pre eld until it’s time to spend money on or do work on said truck, that is why restored ones bring in the money they do, because they are done.

 

My definition of restored and someone else's are often opposite ends of the spectrum though.