I have followed Dakotas posts, not making excuses, but that's one truck. I'm very sure the same scenario could be found for Freightliner, KW, International, Mack etc...
I was at Penn Detroit Diesel in 2009 getting some work done (again) on my APU. I met a driver there that has been on the road for 40 years. He claimed every 3 years for the last 15 he bought a new truck and paid cash. This one he had was a White with a Detroit engine. The truck was 5 or 6 months old, he was in there for his 3rd turbo plus original. No one could seem to figure out why he was going thru turbos. Detroit engineers just kept throwing parts at it. They had just replaced the turbo and had it on a Dynamo and hooked up to the ECM to pull codes. According to him, this was what they did on the other 2 turbos. So 4 turbos in 5 or 6 months on a Detroit motor doesn't make all Detroit motors bad. I drove T600 back in the 90s, couldn't keep front wheel bearings from going out in that thing. Out of a fleet of about 600 trucks, mine was the only problem child with that particular problem. Finally after about 7 months moved to a different truck, no problems of any kind.
In reality, all manufactures of trucks have problems. Some more than others.
As far as resale, by the time I depreciate it out and what I save on repairs because of warranty coverage repairs (and I have had some, see my posts) and what I will be able to sell it for will come out to be a wash at this point in time barring anything major breaking when it goes out of warranty. With the new warranty tho, I think resale values will start to be somewhat competitive because the warranty is transferable at no charge. So you run the truck for 2 to 3 years put say 200 k miles on it, you still got 300 k miles of factory warranty left. No other brand does that without buying a warranty, and at best its only a slight rip off!
Frankly I don't think its a matter of being "so cheap" as it is of others being over rated. Why such a big difference in price of a FL say from Fyda vs Ellenbaum?
