Rates are crashing and fuel to the moon!

I doubt anyone would believe me if I posted my annual maintenance and repairs for my Truck and Trailer. My wife threw away old taxes. I had records from 1996. First 4 years I spent what seemed like a lot. $40k. Exactly what I paid for my first Truck. Paid for it twice. Looking back it wasn’t that bad. Since then it’s been about the same. Because of less shop costs. Paying Labor is a wild card. Might as well have a new Truck payment. Avoid the surprises.

 

I have never had a year with under 30k maintenance costs. That is more than what my payments will be. It goes in for the shop for something and the bill ends up being triple what you expected. The scary thing is even the new trucks have problems right out of the factory. You can go on youtube and look at a dealer walkthrough video on a brand new t680 and you be able to see comments from company drivers complaining about how they had to get towed while their truck only had 18,000 miles in it. Sometimes you can't win.

 

The year before I purchased a new truck I spent 50k on just maintenance. Very little of that was outside labor. But people still tell me they can run an older truck cheaper than a new one.

 

you can absolutely run them cheaper I just wouldn’t trust it much past the other side of town, little different when you wind up 3000 miles from the house, glad my numbers are similar though and it’s not just my ocd throwing money at the truck

 

Well, that’s true enough.

 

I’ve had 1 year that I spent close to $40k. in 2008, then I wrecked that Truck. Spent close to $30k, in 2020, on my current Truck. Blew a head gasket about a year ago and parked it. That’s a $3-$4k job. It’s overdue for a trans and new rears. That’s another $10k easy. I’m going to decide next year after I fix the head whether to start running it again or just sell it. Probably sell it, and buy a fishing boat.

 

Absolutely you can. I run old 2000 Volvos for 10 years already. $15k engine rebuild, $7k transmission and clutch, $15k more for all other stuff. Once everything is rebuilt, you get another 10 years out of it with very little amount spent on maintenance. There is nothing cheaper to run than 12.7 Detroit 60 or N14 with a manual transmission.

Funny thing, my oldest truck with Cummins n14 and 2.3 mil miles is getting a new power steering pump for the first time today. $250 part and half hour labor. This thing has been consuming 3-4 gallons of oil per 10k miles for almost 3 years now. I don't know how much longer it will last, probably gonna park it in the spring for good lol
Gonna rebuild another one with original 750k miles that is sitting as a spare.

If you are an o/o or have friends/family drive for you, than yes, old truck is a good option. However if you are planning to hire drivers from the street, you gotta get only brand new equipment and get rid of the truck at 500k miles.

 

Those old Volvo's ain't bad looking at all

 

Lol I posted pics, because I figured when people hear "old Volvo" they automatically imagine beat up falling apart crap

 

I don't know how you do it. After 20 years I would have zero paint left from rock chips alone. How do the interiors hold up after 20 year? If I was going to get really old, I would want to go back before ABS was mandated. What a pain in the arse system. A lot of expense to keep that light away and stay legal.

This needed to be fixed also after the rebuild. This was the estimate, I had already spend a couple grand elsewhere trying to diagnose. I also tore apart the harness trying to find a broken wire. It was another influencer on why I decided to scrap it.