389 pete for first truck

Thats a loaded question. Short answer is unless you can afford to buy it outright or fix it if things break then no. If you can either buy it outright or keep an oh #### fund handy then maybe. Do you have contracts/contacts ready? Do you have alternate plans? how about a trailer? do you have accountants or accounting skills and/or software? how handy are you with repairs? All these are just SOME questions. Take it from me, i prepared to be an owner op for YEARS before i pulled the trigger.

As for it not being a good first truck....no truck is a good first truck. You just have degrees of bad. I think the 389 may get a bit more flak due to being more expensive and the body being way more expensive. Honestly i cant think of a reason why it would be better or worse then another truck.

 

Buy what makes you happy. You're the one driving it, not the haters.

A truck is a truck. If its spec'd to do the job you intend to do, go for it.

 

Fair enough. Next question is do you have a plan B? What happens if they boot you to the side? if i seem harsh btw im not trying to be. Being an O/O is risky and the trick to not end up broke is to mitigate risks as much as you can. The questions i stated in my last post are ones you need to know yourself to have a chance.

Additionally i would recomend at least 10-15k in the bank AFTER start up costs before you go O/O this is to cover major repairs, tows, fuel, and so on.

 

The long nose Petes have bad turning radius imo. I don’t know what kind of trailer you haul, but I wouldn’t use it for hauling containers or vans or anything where you have to bump docks daily. But it’ll be a good truck for anything else. Also the dealership network isn’t as big as Freightliner or International. Parts might be expensive since it’s like the “Cadillac” of trucks. An a lot of them Pete owners work on their own stuff. That’s why I don’t think it’s a good first truck. It’s a super truckers truck in my opinion lol.

 

Just because largecar owners work on their own Petes has nothing to do with it being a good truck or not. I’d work on my own truck no matter what it is. Working on it yourself keeps it out of an expensive shop. You ever notice that most of the trucks that spend their time in the dealers with the exception of the emissions bs could easily be fixed by their drivers and most of the drivers waiting in the dealer lounges don’t know what a wrench is. Most Large car owners I know are great mechanics, fabricators, and problem solvers.
Most large cars I’ve been around have had 3 million plus miles on them and still counting.

 

A lot of emissions issues are easily fixable or preventable. Just gotta learn how to clean and check the sensors and carry a box of replacments around. Soot gets on the sensors and fouls them. They start to read bad and the ECM and def systems go beserk. Meanwhile just pulling and cleaning them and a few other things every 25k-100k miles precents a ton of problems.

 

Guys have been using hood trucks for those exact things until these new trucks came on the scene and still do.