Waiting on New Trucks thread.

I haven’t had any problems with mine since the software update over a year ago.

 

We’ve had several do it.

I’m going in for a BCM update, Friday, to hopefully fix my random A/C, cruise control, and gauge backlight issues. Last Friday night, I parked, shut off the truck, get out, and the five clearance lights above the windshield were still on, which is a first. Checked the front and back, to see if any others are on. There weren’t. Unlock the door, get back in, push the switches down and they’re off. Turned the key on/off, but, the lights stayed on. Turned the lights on/off and that took care of it. The randomness of this truck’s systems is infuriating, especially when it’s hot out, I start the truck, and I have no A/C. That’s become a more regular deal, now. I’d like it to burn to the ground.

 

T

There's a switch for that.

 

My company truck, a 579, has done the frozen screen, (update fixed It think) high beams stopped working after normal use( turning lights on and off fixes that) the worst problem I had was taking off from a red light to immediately climb the on ramp to i-10 in San Antonio, a line of cars behind me. Got a warning " hill assist diabled" or something like that. It wouldn't upshift and I was stuck at 3mph. I threw on the 4 ways and squeezed over to the side of the ramp, cars took a hint and went around. Turned off the truck and restarted. Problem went away. Entering the interstate at 3 mph would have been like not moving at all.

 

I know a Volvo has a battery disconnect, but, wasn’t sure about PACCAR products. My T680 has tank fairings and the only time I’ve been in the battery box was to figure out why the truck had no power to the inverter cables. Turns out, mine has a breaker/disconnect mounted in the battery box for them.

Mine would randomly go into neutral. There’d be no available throttle input, either. The truck would only idle. Very inconvenient at stop signs and lights. Dealer replaced the shift stalk and gave it an update. Truck hasn’t done it since. Apparently, it’s a common PACCAR problem.

 

Here's this week's update:

September 30, 2023
389 Peterbilt - 145.........13 389X's
579 Peterbilt - 415
T680 KW - 480
W9 KW - 111
Cascadia - 120
Volvo Family - 186
Mack - 70
International - 111

An increase of 42 units for sale from last week. Not much good going on out there. In the reefer world, volumes have seemed to dropped off along with rates declining. I've seen some dry van loads paying better reefer too. So I've started expanding my search to include "V" loads. It doesn't hurt to call to see if they load reefers. It's been about 50/50 success and normally we just use it to get back home.

September is in the books for us and again we aren't going broke but not making enough to make one want to expand the fleet. Versus August, September was a better month driven solely by trading in the 389 for the 579. Rough estimate is that it cost $2,000 more to run my other 389.

 

Was by the dealership, yesterday. If it wasn’t for all the service work sitting around, I don’t believe they’d still be in business. The showroom was a ghost town, with employees sitting/standing around. One of my fellow employees and I agreed their expansive selection of used fleet trucks doesn’t look to have dwindled at all. The sales lot is still full and the row across the back are all still sitting there. They’re still asking over $100K for 500K mile trucks.

 

I don't know what these dealers are going to do with all the inventory stacking up plus people not taking delivery of new ones, it's a double whammy. There are buyers out there just not at the prices they are asking. The auctions are telling us they are 20% overpriced. If I was a cash buyer I'd got straight to the auctions if looking for used equipment. There's a Peterbilt dealer in California who said a fleet didn't take delivery of 11 new 579's, so for each month they have all 11 they are paying $15K a month in interest.

For myself, I'm actually kicking around the idea of adding a used reefer trailer with some of the auction prices I've seen. We'd probably use the trailer 10 times a year but it would add some flexibility to the operations and if the market turned maybe we can flip it for a profit lol.

 

+1........ I think the used market is the way to go currently. New just doesn't work in my opinion. However if it is a used lemon then that changes everything. That's the gamble with used.

 

If you read the comments Peterbilt Steven said he already has 100 orders. No doubt he does, because everyone wants to be the first, but in one year let's see how orders are doing. I bet that truck specd like that is $260K easy. To each their own but it looks wonky to me. It's like the 389 and W990 had a kid and created this.

I bet this 589 will kill Peterbilt's Steve business. No more "389's built by Peterbilt Steve" where you can say bought one from Tulsa and in the process probably paid $10K more if you'd had gone somewhere else (speaking from experience as Tulsa was $10K higher than other dealers when specing the same truck). But more power to them as thats the beauty of marketing.