Used Truck Question

One of the first things to do is swing by the local truckstop and pick up a copy of the truck trader paper. It will have plenty of trucks in it, and you can get a feel for what your money will bring. If you are planning to be in the 20-25k range, then there are a lot of trucks out there, and you can look as new as 2000-maybe 2001 or so. The truck trader is a valuable resource for finding out what is on the market and what your money will buy.

Since we have 6 months at least to work on this, let me hold off a bit and I will put in some longer info in the next week or so. Right now, I am making preparations to go out and battle this wonderful storm out on the highway, so my time at home is getting short.

 

You should also know that if she will be leasing on her truck to a company most will require a truck no older than 5 years of age.

 

Okay, I took this problem to work with me this past week, since I discovered long ago that I do my best thinking when I have 300 miles or so to drive and can devote some mental time to the task at hand. And along the way, I collected a bunch of truck trader magazines, which will go out to you as soon as I get past a post office where I can mail them.

But in having time to ruminate on this while driving, I have some possible suggestions for some changes to your plan. For one thing, I am retired military, and I know how easily fate and fortune can waylay someone on their way out the door into the civilian world. I had plenty of time to think about that while fighting a miserable snowstorm on Tuesday nite, thinking that if my original plans for retirement would have come through, I would be warmly ensconsced in the xray room of a local hospital, taking x-rays of broken arms, warm, and dressed in clean white clothing.

Instead, I was behind the wheel of a truck working my way through the weather. Which is proof that until your niece is out and happily settled into a life of trucking, the best thing to do is to let here get out there, get her feet wet, and actually ensure that she does want to have the life of a truckdriver, operating out in the commercial world. So I am in full agreement to have her take her start driving for someone else, learn at their expense, and ensure that trucking, as well as flatbed trucking, is the life for her. It's not the same as working in the military, and there are some adjustments that will have to be made, and it will be simpler for her to make those adjustments behind the wheel of someone else's truck.

During that time, she is going to have to put in extensive study and planning for the possible jump to being an owner operator. She probably already has a firm understanding that nothing ever comes out better than the planning you put into it, and in most cases we recommend on here that someone have a minimum of 3 years experience as a company driver before considering making the jump into being an O/O. So even with your assistance, the time line is going to be very shortfused for her, and is going to take a lot of extra effort on her part to make it work. it's not impossible, but it is going to take a lot of attention to detail on her part to make it happen.

Now, here comes the part where I diverge from yoru current plan. In most cases, I would laud the idea of someone buying a good used truck, and then doing a goodly amount of maintenance on it before putting it on the road. However, in all of those cases, the person buying the truck is able to do the majority of the mechanical work themselves. In this case, you would have to pay a mechanic full rate for his time doing this, and that changes the dynamics of the situation considerably. I have a full list of maint items that I recommend someone do on a used truck, and they are all parts prone to possible failure, and things that are kind of expensive to repair on the road, but reasonable to do yourself at home on the weekend, using basic mechanical skills.

However, due to your personal limitations, you are unable to do this kind of work on your own, and it will get real expensive very quickly, or some much needed steps would be bypassed to save money.

Another issue is that if the tractor is much beyond 4-5 years old, it is very hard to get a truck leased on to a decent company. Companies are funny that way, once you are legally leased to them, your truck can be just about any age you want it to be, but they want a late model truck at sign on.

So, what I would suggest is to do this a little bit differently than your original plan. Instead of you buying a used truck with the intention of it lasting two years of running, why not take the same amount of money and apply it to the downpayment of a used truck. This serves a couple of purposes. It allows your niece time to look around an see what brand and specs of trucks are being used for the work she will be doing. it allows her to pick out a model she is perfectly comfortable with, which is important since she will be spending a lot of time in it and little things about the interior can be very important.

Another thing this accomplishes is that it allows her to establish credit of her own, which is going to be crucial for being an O/O. it's a financial business as much as it is a business of driving, and the better credit record she has, the better off she will be.

Another thing to this approach is that by using the money as a down payment, she will have a vested financial interest in the ownership of the truck. And I am sure that over the years you have seen times where someone gifted something to a younger person and it went awry because there was no sense of ownership, and no sense of responsibiliity accompanying the ownership.

So by having the money used as a down payment, you end up with a newer truck, that your niece has both a personal and financial interest in, she develops her own credit, and she has a truck matching the specs of what others in her business are running.

You can take the money that you had planned on using to do maintenance on the truck and have it set aside as needed for any unplanned expenses, though with a newer truck, this should be minimized.

So those are the current thoughts on this, and you can take the info with the codocil that I often put on my internet ramblings, which is "you are getting free advice from a total stranger over the internet, so take ot for the value it has".

 

First, look for a large package to hit your door in a couple of days. I swung by a post office today and dropped it off into the caring hands of our mail service, so it should hit you by Sat or Monday at the latest. Remember, the point of the papers is to let you see what a certain amount of dollars will buy, rather than buying a specific truck. By perusing the various ads, you will get a feel for how much truck can be bought for how much money and develop a sense of value on what one is worth.

As more info comes out, my advice changes somewhat. I made an apparently false assumption that your grandniece was probably in her early 20's coming out of a tour in the military, and your statement above makes it clear that she is probably more mature and settled than that, and that changes my advice some. She probably has already established her own credit and is responsible enough not to abuse a gift in the way that some younger folks can. Which was the intent of my advice, to provide some financial interest so that there wasn't a feeling that the truck was simply provided as a "freebie". I have a younger brother that is living proof of the difference between the way some people treat things they are just given, and things they have to pay for out of their own pocket.

As for your question of whether or not you can find a truck in the appropriate price range and age, I think that the papers will provide you with a yes answer on that.

As for setting specs, that is what you have started to do, and while they don't match my own exactly, they are reasonable for the work you want to do with the truck. The whole point of setting specs when buying is so when you walk onto a lot covered with clean shiny trucks, you can eliminate the ones that aren't good choices for your business and concentrate on the 10% or so that are. A midroof, about 230" wheelbase. about 430 hp, with a 10 or 13 speed transmission would be a pretty good setup.

There is a gentleman on here named "Maestro" whom you should send a pm to. He runs a late model Volvo, specced about as you are interested in, and he can give you some detailed info about the Volvo motor. He's a good guy, very honest, and I am sure that he will take the time to answer any specific questions about the engine and it's maintenance history over the past 2 years of operation.

 

Hello Linder
Any used truck that you buy should have a National Truck Protection inspection and buy the insurance for two years. Look up NTP on the web and good luck to you and your niece and thank her for her service to our country.
Regards
Waywardwind