For your first truck, used is not necessarily a bad choice. This for many can make the difference of becoming an Owner especially when financing a new truck is unaffordable or unobtainable. But, with buying a used truck comes risk that for some could be catastropic at the very least! Although costly, fortunately for us this was not the case.
In our case we found our 2001 Freightliner DR-unit while at FECC's corporate office. People that worked at corporate knew the now previous owner and the quaulity of care these owners had given the truck. Based on that and reviewing the maintenance records we bought it. The truck had 310,000 miles on it at the time of purchase. The engine was a Caterpillar C-10 set at 335hp that ran great.
With that said, now a word of warning:
Dispite all of the prior excellent care and continued care after we purchased this truck, the engine failed at 651,000 miles. Thankgoodness we were having regular oil analysis done which alerted us to the problem. Unfortunately, it was a problem that didn't show itself until it was to late. It wasn't even affecting the way the engine ran. Although not common, this is a problem with the C-10 engine as I was told by our Cat Service Center. I was also told at the CSC that NOTHING we did in the care of this engine caused this failure. Without actually opening up this (any used) engine to look inside for potentual problems you won't know if a problem like this is occuring. Do you really think a seller would allow you to take the engine apart before buying it? NOT!!!
The cylinder sleeves on the C-10 only have one o-ring to keep the coolant from leaking past and getting into the engine oil. The designed flow of the coolant around the sleeves creates a high volume of flow in the area of the o-rings. In our case five of the six cylinder sleeves had "eroded" the metal in the o-ring channel (or groove) along with the engine block in the same area. The #6 sleeve developed a leak and the other four weren't far behind. The leak was so small at this point there were NO visible signs of coolant in the oil or a notable drop in our coolant level. Per our Cat sevice Center a second oil analysis was done at a different location to confirmed a leak. Also, the oil and filters were changed immediately after the first analysis and the second was done on the new oil a week later as we worked our way home. It did not matter that we kept good coolant in our engine at all times, the damage still occured. The block would have to be replaced.Since everything on the engine was original we chose to replace everything with new and Caterpillar remaned parts and get an extended full coverage three year 300,000 mile engine warranty. Total cost $25,000
So, you have to pick your poison when buying a new or used truck:
New = large downpayment, large monthly payments, longer term loan, higher insurance cost, warranties to cover most breakdowns (for a while)
or
Used = smaller downpayment, lower payments, shorter term loan, lower insurance cost, little to no warranties left, potentually high and unexpected repair cost that you better be prepared to handle or you're dead in the water and out of business!!!
Plus if you look at any truck with an EatonFuller 10 speed Smartshift
tranny you won't be able to dyno the engine per EatonFuller.
