Buying my own truck

[duck]

The high dollar items that seem to hurt a guy that I would want covered:

Headgasket
Turbo (esp on Cummins with VVG)
Air to Air
Injectors
Trans (aux sections tend to go first as guys are ignorant of how driveline angles can tear one up - if you feel a vibe - get it checked!)
Diffs (rare-ish but they do happen)

Had a c-12 come in - clatter noise - found a 50 cent piece of the #3 cylinder liner in the pan aloing with a valve - piston in the bore sideways - only choice was junk the engine - total cost to replace with reman - was pushing 30k - engine warranties are worth every penny.

Water pumps cost money - hell everything on a truck does but I would concern myself with driveline the most when it comes to condition of the truck.

[merrick4]

no that wasn't too long yellowbill but this stuff is confusing. Now that I'm not working, I think I will go through some of the big companies SEC filed documents and see what I can learn.

I went looking at trucks today, I'm tempted just to extend myself and buy new. I know that's not smart but at least I know what I'm getting, that and I won't have to worry about making a payment. I've been just looking at freightliners but I'm going to the Kennworth dealer Tuesday.

[Ian Williams]

Those fleet trucks have a guarenteed buyback from the manufacturer.

That is how Freightliner got into trouble several years ago. They sold a bunch of trucks to some of these big carriers like Covenant, US Xpress, etc., and agreed to purchase them back for a fixed amount of money. What they failed to see is what could happen in the marketplace. From what I recall the market dropped and they had to pay more to buy the trucks back than they were worth in the marketplace. To help themselves out of the situation they came up the their Select Trucks Program. Under Select they probably covered most of their losses, but got into such straights that they wound up selling out to Chrysler. Of course, they are all now part of Mercedes, at least for now. I think they have been sold recently to an investment group.

Consolidated Freightways sold Freightliner to Daimler way back in 1981.

The guaranteed buyback price fiasco happened in 2001, IIRC the CEO was sacked. I know they set up several remanufacturing locations to take off the integrated sleepers and create looong wheelbase daycabs. IMHO you are better off finding a used truck on your own than one that had a stream of n00bs grinding the gears and a carrier that could care less about PM as they knew it was FLs headache.

Here in Reno Devine & Peters use them to haul cans. One was pushed over by a gust of wind about a month and a half ago:


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[GMAN]

That must have hurt. Where was that happen? It looks familiar.

[brode]

Matt there is no reason why you could not get your own authority , if that is the way you wanted to go. All you need is the Insurance the req is 750,000 liability but you may have some problems with obtaining freight. So I recommend 1,000,000 liability and 1000,000 to 150,000 cargo. You need your BOC-3, your IRP plate, IRS 2290 form, DOT #, IFTA account, and your mc #. There may be more but it depends on what state you live in. If you have any questions you can email me @ brodemoyer@blueridgetmllc.com