Looking into buying my first truck

If you credit is bad you aren't ready to finance a truck. You don't have management and discipline skills.

 

The way credit is scored these days, it's a bunch of BS.

I paid off my personal truck and my score went down, WTF.

 

My opinion is pay the loans of them buy a truck. Thats the type of advice my grandparents would of given. But no one listens to what that generation had to say anymore. So how about this instead: can you answer these questions. If the answer is no to any of these you have no business buying a truck.

1: what do you plan on pulling and what lanes will you run.

2. Are you going to lease to a carrier? If so which one? Do they even have the fright you plan on pulling in the lanes you plan on running?

3. What is the average rate per loaded mile you expect to get and how may miles per month do you expect to run. How many deadhead miles?

4. What is your expected cost per mile?

5. Do you have the funds available to throw twenty thousands dollars at the truck 30 days after purchase? If your answer to this is 'that's what a warranty is for' you are in for a rude awakening. Warranties on used trucks arent worth the paper they are printed on.

6. What is your expected monthly revenue?

7. How much will insurance cost you?

8. Have you priced federally mandated health insurance?

9. Have you priced workmans comp?

10. Do you have an accountant? Are you filing as a sole proprietor, llc, S corp, C corp? Do you even know the difference? This needs to come before the truck purchase.

11. Do you know the specs you need in a truck to efficiently run the freight and lanes you plan on operating in?

 

While paying off a loan is good, credit scores are based on your overall credit available versus how much you use of that. Your scores go up if it's not more than 25%.

 

I had my own truck for ten years. It's not always a better deal. Today the freight rate are the highest they have been in 25 years. When I got my truck the rates were $1.40 - $2.20 per mile. I'm just saying the rate per mile will go back down as more people get into trucking today because they all see the big and easy money with today's rates.

I would not buy any truck between 2002-2013. That's all the years they had trouble with new emission trucks. My 2000 truck was good reliable truck with S60 Detroit. My 2012 was a nightmare in repairs and always in the shop.

Your new boss is the loan payments and always looking for that next load. It's easy to make money today but when the rates drop again it's not so easy. I'm driving a company truck again happy to not have the to worry about repairs. I spent $28,000 in repairs on that 2012 truck and the emission box when bad at 660,000 miles. The Detroit Diesel One Box, they said to replace that would be $12,000. It's not always fun running your own truck.

 

I spent the morning trying to figure out how to help someone who is in the same situation, his student loans have just screwed up his income to debt ratio and he can't get financing (and I am not going to finance anyone). We went to the bank I deal with for commercial loans, he say with the loan consular and she said to pay down the student loans as fast as he can and eliminate the credit card debt by 30% and he will qualify for the loans.

 

Believe me someone will give you a loan. These days there are a lot of Lenders. Problem is you need to be careful. Most are rip offs. However if it’s your only choice and if there’s no pre payment or maybe only a 1st yr prepayment penalty it might be worth it if you can pay the high interest loan off early.I use Bankrate. Com to figure numbers on their calculator regardless of stated % rate. Most Truck Lenders advertising are very deceitful, so long as you know what you’re getting into doesn’t mean you can’t get a Truck. I would check reviews on Arrow Truck or any In House Financers. It may be better to find best Truck and pay higher interest it’s only a problem if stretched out for years.By playing with loan calculator you can figure actual cost for loan in any given amount of time.A good example is Lease with 2 pymts up front and X amount of pymts. Adding all up and imputing into loan calculator shows actual interest % rate. Use the auto loan calculator