Are Simple/cheap pickup trucks gone forever?

[WinstonSmith]

I own 6 vehicles. Two are financed and 4 are paid off. My wifes Escape and my truck I carry a note on, but the little hondas I run back and forth into Atlanta in are purchased cash every year or two. My son's truck I traded guns for here on ODT and my motorcycles were purchased or traded for outright.

On the two vehicles my wife and I do carry a note on I finance them at low rates, buy them for smoking deals and then make at least 1.5X payments. If the payment is 400 a month we pay 300 twice a month for a total of 600 a month. I used to have a little focus before I started buying the hondas outright. It's payment was 250 per month so we paid 250 twice a month for a double payment.

We of course get eaten alive on my wifes car because she drives it so much, but my trucks only get about 10k miles a year so when I sell them I usually get close to what I paid for them.

We have our finances set up so that if one of us lost our job we could still make all of our payments. We wouldn't be able to do much else besides buy gas and groceries but we would at least survive.

We also have our home financed in my wife's name only and our vehicles are financed in my name only. Our thought there is if we ever got in a really big bind we could let the house or the vehicles go and buy cheaper alternatives on the other spouse's credit. I don't know if that would actually work but it seems like a good plan on paper.

If more people were that responsible we wouldnt have so much of the nation bound to their lives in chains with little to no options.

 

[NWSharpshooter]

That's actually why I sold my F-250. I loved the truck but I sat down and figured out what it cost me to own it....especially since I only drove it about 10k miles a year.

In the 22 months I owned it I paid roughly 29K dollars if you add up payment, insurance, fuel, maintenance, tires, etc., everything. While I sold it for only 6 grand less than I paid for it 22 months prior, my out of pocket cost was roughly 29,000 dollars for 22 months or 1318 per month. It didn't matter how much I loved the truck, once I saw that number I got it gone.

 

[WinstonSmith]

I will let them sit on the car lots until the tires rot before i will pay inflated car & truck prices!

Thing is people are buying them. They kinda have to. Its darn hard to live in our society without transportation and they are just handing out "free" money. 0% interest for the first couple years, etc. And people think it's a good deal. Used car prices are pretty darn high which makes the new vehicle deals seem more attractive. And we've been told all the bell and whistle safety tech is a good thing that you just must have.

 

[letusbuyyourcar]

Couldnt agree more. That's why I'll stick with my paid for jeep. They just dont make anything I want at a price I'm willing to pay.

Here's a perfect example of Vehicular Insanity. This is some model of Range Rover that's parked in front of my wife's job at the port among several other Rovers Jags and Maseratis. I took a bad pic since I wasn't supposed to be taking pics. But yes the price on the sticker is $154 and change. I knew they were expensive before but i was thinking $80/$90K ish. And what's worse is that Jag and Rover are some of the worst depreciating vehicles around.

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[Trailrider]

Diesel trucks don't depreciate nearly as fast as gasoline trucks. I sold that King Ranch for 6000 less than I paid for it after owning it for two years.

Yeah that's the part about diesels I like. Huge resale value. I had an older 2006 250 deisel that I sold for 16k last summer with 205k on the odometer. I just couldn't justify having a diesel anymore. I don't haul heavy enough that my 2013 F150 can't handle. But I sure miss it!

 

[palmettomoon]

You're doing better than a lot of folks I financed. The 250 at a little over 700 a month. Not bad. And you are most likely smart enough to not let that be a huge chunk of your monthly net income. Most the paper I bought (or most likely didnt buy) didnt look like that. I saw deals that were like that for folks making much less than 4k net a month and it always boggled my mind why someone would do that to themselves.

Thing is people are buying them. They kinda have to. Its darn hard to live in our society without transportation and they are just handing out "free" money. 0% interest for the first couple years, etc. And people think it's a good deal. Used car prices are pretty darn high which makes the new vehicle deals seem more attractive. And we've been told all the bell and whistle safety tech is a good thing that you just must have.

Isn't 0% interest a scam? I mean if you take a note on a car at 3%, dealer financed (to 'gain' any incentives) you aren't going to be able buy the same vehicle at the same price, off the lot. No way in hell. They build the finance charge into the sales price.

 

[Gunanddoglover]

Go buy that same truck brand new now. You'll probably be close to a grand on the payment

I was answering your question about the cost of truck payments versus house payments back in the day. That was the most expensive, longest car payment I've ever had. I will never buy another new car or truck. I pay cash for used vehicles now. The last one I bought was a 2008 Ford Escape and I paid $7,000 cash for it, low mileage, power windows locks etc, not decked-out. I work at a car dealership and I asked what was the average payment for a pickup truck is and the answer was around $800. That's not for anything special, a low-end Ram 1500 and people are lining up to buy them. Another thing to take into consideration is cost of insurance. You know that has to be expensive. By the time you factor full coverage insurance into the equation I could see where a truck would cost $1,400 a month . Not this cowboy I have better things to do with my money then by a truck that cost almost as much as a house.

 

[galvatron]

I can remember reading a magazine article about job loss due to automation back in the late 1980's. The focus was on the 'hardship' suffered by uneducated union laborers earning $88,000 per year in Detroit by the loss of a few hours each week because the manufacturers were transitioning to robot welders. One worker interviewed said his job was to place four quick spot welds on the undercarriages as they passed over his station. They just didn't know what they were going to do without the extra hours and overtime. A good paying job then in SC was $26,000 per year with a company car. I just couldn't get all teary eyed over their plight.

I was one of those "uneducated union laborers" in 88-90, just out of high school. Worked for GM in Tarrytown.
IIRC pay rate was low to mid $20's/hr, unlimited OT depending on your department. Again IIRC I made around 60k/yr not bad for a 19yr old kid living at home.

Now for that 60k, lift and install one complete strut assembly every 53 seconds....

 

[Trailrider]

Break it out per week. I week for taxes, 1 week for vehicle/insurance, 1 week house/bills, 1 week grocery's/gas/spending/kids/savings/etc. And those were the folks being responsible and doing well from what I saw as usual. Debt is a trap that comes with complimentary chains. Working in that industry really opened my eyes.

Yeah I definitely think the wife and I are responsible. Always pay our stuff off, excellent credit, etc. But I don't like to be tied down to that much debt. Could I finance a $50k truck? Sure. Sure as hell don't want to though.

 

[palmettomoon]

The magazine article was lying then. They made it sound like high school graduates were performing light shift work for $80K+ per year.

I've never worked in a plant or a factory so I have no idea.