Odometer Rollback Is On The Rise

My friend leases cars. He owns one, but leases the other one. He hooks his laptop computer to both cars and adjusts them to only show half the miles driven. When he turns in the lease car, he hooks up the laptop to start showing the true milage.

 

Remember the days when you could just un hook the cable of of the transmission?
All this computer stuff was supposed ro make it tamper proof.

 

I jack my truck up once a month and let it run in reverse to take some miles off

 

Scams everywhere. SMH.

 

When I was a kid we’d unhook the Speedo cable when we borrowed my dads car so he wouldn’t know how many miles we’d driven and we were careful to add just the right amount of gas so the gauge would match the odometer

 

With any vehicle I just assume the odometer has been rolled back and assume the seller is lying about everything

If they don’t have receipts , then they didn’t do the maintenance

I just check
The carfax and look at the condition of the vehicle , pull the codes in the computer before and after the test drive

how many miles doesn’t matter .
It’s how they got put on and how it was maintained

The company I work for owns 10 or 15 pickups

some are assigned to employees who take them home every night etc

and some are fleet vehicles that various employees check out and use to travel to a job site and work there .

The one that’s been assigned to me for 10 years has 250k on it ,
Has a few dings on the body but has been treated well and maintained well , cause I’ve been
Doing it or taking it and having it done

some of the other trucks have 40k on them and are dented , seats are shredded , etc

which one would you prefer to buy ?

Wouod you rather have a vehicle that has 200k put on by a traveling salesman who constantly drove hundreds of interstate miles every day and changed the oil every 3k

or a door dash / Uber driver with half the miles out on in constant stop and start ?

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/B98fK4x-34c?si=b4m3__X2jzKebsZL

"The miles aren't coming off!"

 

And of course it’s probably shady dealer lots that are doing most of this rather than joe-blow private party sellers trying to sell their car on Craigslist or Autotrader. Naturally being in the business of buying and flipping, they see a cash cow here in raising the perceived value through cheating. I wouldn’t put it past some individual sellers, but at the end of the day they aren’t in the car business and probably don’t have the same incentive motivation to cheat a little extra money on one transaction. Few individual owners bother even selling their own vehicles private party nowadays, just not wanting to deal with the hassle. Usually only if it’s a really old/cheap vehicle or a specialty piece who’s trade in value wouldn’t even be in the ballpark of its actual market value.

 

On my nearly 20 year old pickup truck the ECM miles are about 8,000 more than the odometer miles and I've had it since brand new. The reason for my particular variation is the slightly oversized 285 tires I have on it versus the 265's that it came with from the factory.