Negotiating a used truck

i consider myself a pretty good negotiator. sometimes it just takes feeling the seller out and seeing where he is willing to work with you.

for example

i bought my Mack from a privet seller it was pretty obvious fairly quickly that he was not going to move much on the dollar figure. it was priced very reasonably to start with and he would only come down maybe 500 bucks on the price taking the truck as is cash sale. so i worked on the extra's got a almost new 95% set of drive tires. shorter exhaust stack put on he had a wet kit that had come off the truck but not currently installed he re-installed the wet kit. as well as a hand full of odd and end repairs plus got him to deliver the truck to me 1000 miles. in the end i handed him a certified cashiers check for 500 less than his asking price and 1000 in cash he handed me the title i handed him money at my front door. so you can split that up however you want but how i look at it is i paid 500 less than the asking price probably 3500+ in extra's and got the truck delivered to me for what it would have cost me to go get it myself without having to spend 2 days to go get it.

then when he showed up he also brought every spare part he had for the truck with him, a spare pto a assortment of spare hydraulic hoses extra alternator ect.

 

I'll do my best to answer these, if anyone else knows something I don't, just jump right in!


do any of the older 670's have work stations? Can a work station be installed in place of the lower bunk if it didn't come with one?

I haven't personally been in one, but the bunk setup in 670 has changed very little between the 05-15 years. The 780 had a work station going back that far, and I'd be surprised if O/O spec'd 670s didn't have it. If that was the case, however; I assume retrofitting a newer bottom bunk/work station into an older sleeper wouldn't be an extensive procedure or particularly expensive. I know for a fact some 07-08 FL Columbias had the lower bunk work station and Volvos are known for having ergonomic options inside.

Do most 670's have refrigerators?

The majority I've seen do, it's a smaller fridge than the factory 780 and some drivers will have pulled that cabinet and replaced with a bar or mini fridge.

Whats the shortest wheelbase of a 780 you know of?

In Canada, a permit is required to run a tractor over 244", so most every truck is shortened to at least that. I have a 780 on my watch list right now that is 229".

I noticed a lot of O/O don't like super singles, do you think this would be much problem in my case? The biggest complaint was ruining wheels if a tire blows. If pressures are checked regularly is this a problem? With the light weight of my trailer for a truck like this I wouldn't expect to have much damage to rim on a blow out?

I may not be very popular for pointing this out, but many drivers (not just O/O) don't like change. Blowouts are caused by a few different things, and all you can do is mitigate your risk, not eliminate it.

Causes of blowouts:

-incorrect tire pressure
-extreme heat, caused by wrong pressure or wrong tire application
-travelling at speeds above tire's safety rating (stamped on side wall or by letter code)
-roadway hazards, picking up nails, etc
-broken steel belts, causing bulges
-tread separation from uneven wear or defective manufacture
-scuffing or physical damage
-turning so tightly the tire (on a trailer) pivots and pulls off the rim (more so an issue with trailer)

Wide singles are better on fuel and no more/less likely to blow if they are properly maintained. We have a 60' air hose with a glad hand on 1 end and manometer/threaded tire fitting on the other. This way, if a tire looks low or at our regular intervals we can hook it up to the emergency glad hand and use the onboard compressor to maintain pressure.

Will the rim be damaged if you drive on it with a blown tire? Most likely. For the skeptics of wide singles though, do you run duals on your steer axle? Well.... No. Mitigate risk, we are all running singles up where it REALLY counts (right underneath our feet) and the sky isn't falling.

Its not a cheap conversion (duals to singles) so if you find the right truck, consider that as an upgrade. Maybe carrying a spare will reduce your side-of-the-road cost and in erase peace of mind, but at 500ft lbs of torque, changing the tire yourself isn't an option for most of us.

I should add a caveat: I do not (cannot) run wide singles as they aren't legal to run Canadian weights. We are allowed 92k lbs on a tandem tractor/trailer setup and also frequently haul tridem trailers at 105k lbs and wide singles are limited to 80k.

Hopefully this helps!