First time buyer

The cheapest option is going to an auction. A couple of caveats though:

1. The truck may be a jalopy, you won't have the same opportunity to inspect it as you would if you were buying it from a dealer, or have recourse if it's a lemon. It's strictly buyer beware and all sales are final.

2. You may have to go to several auctions (or 20) before you find the truck you want and win a bidding war for it.

3. The auction is not going to finance it for you and if you don't come up with the cash you'll not only lose your deposit but could be sued because an auction bid is a binding contract.

Unless you've been to many auctions (over 100), don't even bother, you'll end up learning the hard way and probably paying too much too. Even professionals are known to get caught up in 'auction fever'.

When I was in the used car business, I bought many cars off Craigslist. I would lowball the heck out of the sellers. Was I taking advantage of the sellers? You bet I was! Like I used to tell them; it's not much fun being a used car salesman.

BTW, I bought my truck from the bank after winning the bidding war for it at auction but not meeting the reserve. I did the back and forth with the bank for a few days before we reached a deal. I was ready to walk at any point. In business, the best word in your vocabulary is 'NO'.

 

Thank you for the info, and I will remamber the magic word” NO” if needed.

 

I agree with both of these. Don't get overextended from day one with a high payment. Get a small loan for a $15k-$20k truck. Build your commercial credit, and keep cash in reserve for repairs. You will find the idea of a $500 payment much more comfortable each month. You are really come to like that when the truck is down for a week and a half for major repairs and you're not trying to scrape up another $2,000 for a note. Start small learn and build your way up.

 

Brother, I would find an older non EGR emission truck. Look for one, if possible, from a private party. Service records and a fresh in frame, within 400,000 miles of purchase is what I would look for. Lease the truck to a carrier that pays more than $1 a mile, they are out there. Then invest in some tools, learn your truck, do the repairs that you can and let a good shop take care of the heavy components. Being strapped with $3,000 to $4,000 + in payments and insurance is not something I would want to wake up to every morning. You are nothing more than an indentured servant to the truck and finance company. No thanks.

And a warranty? Don't waste the money, they are not worth spit in most cases. Learn your equipment.

 

Cheap trucks need to be in junk yards.

Cheap owners need to be in another business.

I wrote the following a while back for another forum, sorry it is in a format without line breaks or periods for a reason, it is a modified version a magazine article written in the 40's about someone's first car. I had to retype this from the print out that I made because that forum is no longer around and by the way this version is copyrighted ©.

You just spent $15k on a truck that looks great in the pictures but when seen up close and personal is ratty and falling apart with a million and a half miles, you are told that it had an "in-frame done recently" and it is ready to go, you are all excited because you are going to be an Owner Operator to fulfill that "dream of owning your own truck", he is a sort of fellow you would have a beer with or go fishing, an Andy Taylor type, down home humor and likable personality that he has tells you he may be upset if you ask too many questions so you don't, you didn't even consider doing the Due Diligence by having an OA done or a dyno with blowby done because the owner said it is in tip-top condition with that "recent" in-frame, he lets it idle for a bit while he is making small talk with you about your plans and telling you that you are making the right choice, he said "look at the vent tube, no blowby on idle" so you think that because it isn't blowing a thing out of the vent tube that the blowby is great, you climb into the cab for the first time, look around like a kid who has entered the circus for the first time in their life, looking at the gauges, they look alright, oil pressure is fine, temps are spot on, the air is cycling a bit too much but that's ok, sure it is ratty, worn seats, ripped up headliner, the vent window on the drivers side looked a bit odd with some separation of the glass on the vent window caused by a little crack and the bigger window just doesn't roll up all the way when you hit the button because the owner said "you have to nudge it a bit with your fingers while holding down the button and maybe it needs some lube to help it along", the passenger one makes a clicking sound when it goes up, but that's alright the floor mat is worn in a few spots, it is going to be your first truck so you have to make allowances, the sleeper has an odd odor to it, thinking it is the mattress which is an easy fix, just take it out and replace it, the fridge is pretty nasty by your wife standards but that too can be replace if it doesn't clean up right, screw the idea of bringing it to a mechanic to check it out, you don't want to "insult" the guy by acting like something may be defective, he seems to be honest enough by disclosing a lot of "information" you didn't expect like the window, it drove well enough around the block when he drove it and you sat in the passenger seat, so you want it, you need it, you love it so you just write a check for the truck at the asking price with no bargaining because he mentioned that there were other people looking at it and you don't want that fantastic machine to slip through your finger tips, you want to be happy as you get into your very own truck, you know that it is going to be alright, you are even shaking with excitement as you write him the check but .. you get it home, it ran OK on the ride home, not like those company trucks you are used to, you know it needs some work, but that little hesitation a few times may be a fuel filter and you put that on your mental list of things to get, and the clutch seemed to slip a bit more than you remembered when you were in the passenger seat on the test drive so an adjustment gets put on the mental list too, the temp gauge was a little higher than you remembered when it was idling, but let's not worry to just worry, you pull into the driveway, toot the air horn for your wife and kids to see your very own truck and go in excited after they crawl around it for 15 minutes, you pull the hood open and show the kids that great big engine that should be yellow but is so covered with grease grim and filth it causes you to change the subject when your 5 year old asked is it going to break?, so the next day you clean it up, wash the interior down, get the food that is encrusted on the floor from years of never cleaning it scraped up and with a bucket of boiling water and a few caps full of get that new mattress in it with new sheets but that odor is still there, maybe you think some frebreeze will help eliminate that odor so you drown the sleeper with it and it smells great for the first hour so you stick your stickers on it, wash it, shine it up and put the trailer you just bought on it, and go get your first load as a new Owner Operator, it is great, it is fantastic, you pulled into the yard with all this pride, pulling your own trailer with your own truck and get a dock assignment, with all these loser company drivers around you, thinking how envious that must be of you and your new truck as an Owner Operator, you get loaded, get through the guard's scrutiny of the paper work and on your way with a full load in that new truck as an Owner Operator, but then when you get it under a load, all you see is blue out of the stacks and blue under the truck thinking it was on fire, you panic "oh not my truck, it can't be my truck" so you pull into the nearest truck shop and tell the counter guy you're under a load can he have a mechanic look at the truck quickly and he does, sympathetic to your plight so the shop tells you the bad news, it looks like you need an in-frame, the engine is shot, and "by the way, the trans has so much gunk and metal shavings in it, it is ready to explode so you need a rebuilt in it soon", You are beside yourself, but you have to get the load to where it needs to be 700 miles away, you buy five gallons of oil and pay the entire bill on your credit card, then off you go, leaving a trail of blue smoke for miles behind you, you get the load to its destination barely on time, you push yourself to doing it, adjust your logs so you look legal and then you head back towards home with another load at seventy cents a mile to cover the oil expenses because you are using a gallon every hour on the road, you get home after delivering that load, you start calling around for a shop to do the work, find out that the age of the truck means more problems for the shop to get the good parts, so you have to accept cheaper parts and when the shop gets into it they tell you have you a cracked ring in number 6 cylinder which destroyed the liner and number three cylinder is so scorn from an overheated piston that it is surprising the thing didn't go into runaway mode with the amount of oil it was passing into the manafold, the mechanic and shop manager were surprised that it ran at all, but when it is all said and done you dump another $20k in a truck that is was worth less than $10k if it was near perfect to begin with but it doesn't matter, it is your truck and you are now an Owner Operator.

 

New trucks break down too. I would take the path that leaves the most amount of working capital at my disposal after said truck acquisition.

 

Agreed 100%, been there done that , 5 years 3000$ monthly payments.
now i purchased a used with 25k $, still making $$, i can afford to park it a couple of months during winter and take it easy .

 

Not the kind of used truck I was speaking of. There are some nice ones out there, you just have to look. Not everyone is a dirt bag.

 

'
That is how I found mine.

 

you could get a nice W9 or 379 most reliable trucks out there ok they have bad mpg but you will be rolling instead of the shop. with 35K cash you could find one of each in great conditions ready too work!!