What's A Cheap Reliable Truck?

No. That is just when and where one can drive legislation designed only to confuse us.

Costs like states that want to erect toll roads because the cost to maintain certain roads for truckers is going up. Cost of fuel doesnt match what the payout is. What the agreed set price may not cover the cost of fuel or operating costs. Anything that ads to the over head will affect your ability to earn money.

 

Go to the truck shop and kick some tires and talk to the mechanics , maybe try working in one.

 

Cheap and dependable doesn't usually go together.

The cheapest way and the most dependable equals a lot of hard work and is not that cheap.

That route would be for you to learn how to wrench. Then buy an old truck for maybe a couple thousand dollars.

Rebuild or buy a big cam engine. Simple mechanical easy to work on dead reliable. Then you have to go over the entire truck and I don't have enough time or energy to write everything you need to do but you need to go from the front to the back and make it like new and make it dependable.

It's not cheap because you may have 20 or 30 grand into it when you're done. But you could never spend 20 or 30 grand and have what you'll have.

Then in the scheme of things, you have something cheap and dependable, but you have to really break your you know what to put that thing in shape. And that also takes time.

It's just like a woman. There is no cheap route. You ALWAYS pay. But sometimes it works out for better or worse, or for richer or poorer. You are agreeing to pay right there in the wedding vows. You always pay one way or another.

 

The series 60 and the n14 are both very good engines.

The n14 had electrical problems with the injectors and the harness from what I understand but they were a good motor.

The big cam is the mechanical version of the n14. Same block. There are some small differences but the engines are virtually the same. Except the big cam has no computer no wires nothing like that to go bad, and the injectors for the big cam are $65 versus 300 or 400 a piece for the n14. Even though they share the same block, anything that you buy for the n14 will cost more money.

And no electronic sensors, like a speed sensor, when that goes bad you'll have to do 25 miles an hour and depending where you are, might take you three or four hours to get to a dealer, maybe more. That's a lot of fun when you're fighting traffic and you can only do 25 miles an hour... to get to the dealer that is going to charge you an arm and a leg... for a part that is completely unnecessary and not needed by the mechanical engine... or you can just pay the tow truck.... and then pay the dealer.

No such issues with the big cam. Mechanical engines are certainly more dependable than their electronic counterparts. The electronic engine is the same diesel engine but with a whole bunch of added on stuff and all that added on stuff is more stuff to go wrong. And harder to diagnose also. The newer the engine and truck, the worse it gets.

I guess you can tell I'm not a fan of anything electronic.

 

I only said that to try and persuade you not to do it. Of course there will still be O/O's, but like I said, it''s only going to be the ones that have had contracts for years, and as shown in our economy, even that isn't so stable. The Feds are clearly running out of places to suck money from, and the trucking industry is ripe for the picking. Like the elderly, we have no real voice. If we did, it never would have gotten to this point. Do something else with your money, invest in land in Colorado, but to think you're going to make it in trucking as a new O/O, now there's your pipe dream, sorry. Don't blame me, I ran my own truck when it was fun. I'd NEVER do it today.