good truck to buy or stay away from

You would have to go look at the truck to see if the plate is actually bolted to the flange or bolted to a piece of angle with those flat head style bolts.

 

There's no law against drilling the frame flanges AFAIK... it's not recommended for many reasons but I seriously doubt that plate would ever cause the frame to crack.

 

truck got sold yesterday--oh well--you snooze you lose

 

I think you are the winner...too much money for a '98 Freightliner!
Even with the low miles. Someday you will want to sell it and the age of a truck always effects the sale price. JMO.

 

You are very much the winner. You really need to be carefull with Powell Equipment. They are a bunch of schisters. They take bad trucks, slap paint on them and overprice them. They don't have a very good reputation around here at all. They had a gorgeous W900L I went to look at. I got there and it had a huge hole in the exhaust, cab cobbled together, a lot of cab rot painted over, etc. Then I got different stories about the truck from two different guys there.
Really got to watch these guys!