mileage

cnorman70 · May 8, 2007

"Wannabee" here...

I've perused a lot of the ads in the "find trucks" section of EO, and see that a lot of the equipment listed have quite a bit of mileage on them.

What would be considered an "exhorbitant" amount of mileage, say for a cargo van or straight truck?

I guess it's not fair to compare a cargo van used for expediting to a car used for personal use...or is it?

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks.

rollnthunder · May 8, 2007

Well first off you are right its not fair to compare cargo vans to cars.Most of the people i have seen with cargo vans have diesel engines in them and as long as you take care of it,it will in turn take care of you.I have a straight truck that has a detroit diesel with 582,000 runs great doesnt leak or use oil.I do oil changes every 15,000 miles(recommended by detroit diesel).But there are a few motors you do need to use extreme caution around the main one that comes to mind is a 3126 cat engine.But there has been a few people who have gotten alot of miles out of one of these but more of them have had lots of problems plus you CAN NOT do a in frame rebuild its basically a motor they pull throw off to the side and put another in.Well that is costly.If you are looking to get a straight truck try and get a class 8 truck they have heavy duty transmissions,motors and just a all around better built truck for what we do.Let me know if you need any other help.

cliffn · May 8, 2007

Recently I was talking to someone about this subject and I told him this about the big truck diesel engines:

They are designed to go a million miles or more. When you compare this to a car engine, for instance, when a car gets above one hundred thousand miles that is getting up there but obviously with proper maintenance it may be good for a lot more.

Therefore, I generally use this rule of thumb. When you look at a class 8 truck with 200,000 miles on it, it is much like looking at a car with 20,000 miles on it.

I have never heard anyone else make this one to ten (or ten to one) comparison but I would bet it is pretty close.

My wife and I purchased a used truck which had over 400,000 miles on it but it was a class eight truck in good shape. It now has over 900,000 miles on it and continues to do well. We maintain it faithfully and its recent oil analysis (yesterday) was excellent.

I would not have purchased a smaller truck with that many miles but I know there are a lot of them out there doing well.

I really do not know how many miles they are getting out of the cargo vans.

Maybe this will help a little. Good luck.

Cliff and Tami
D Unit Team
18 Wheeler Team 8 years
D Unit Team 4 years

terryandrene · May 8, 2007

I've had three one ton cargo vans that I sold with 500,000+ miles. Each of them were sold to expediters that continued to use them in expediting. The last van I sold a year ago at 557,000 miles is still going strong at over 600,000. I would think that the optimum time to buy a used van would be about three year old mark with no more than 300,000 miles. An additional three years of service should be doable.

A good preventive and corrective maintenance record and the age of the cargo van are important factors to consider. Some of the larger companies that have waiting lists for cargo van O/O's generally will not sign on a van that is older than 5 years, regardless of mileage. Many others look at the service and maintenance records, regarless of the age. Sadly, some expedite carriers don't even appear to be concerned with the appearance of the van

Jefferson3000 · May 9, 2007

I had a Ford cargo van. A gasser at that with the old straight 6 in it. I sold it at 370,000 miles. I did need to replace the bearings at just under 200,000. That was part fluke breakdown and part my ignorance. It was not necessarily a fault of the manufacturer. But after the rebuild it still ran great. I only sold it because it had suffered some frame damage after being T-boned by an old car that popped out of gear in a parking lot.

Drive Safe!

Jeff

Driver for 15 years
O/O for 13 years
OOIDA #829119