Why I drive old trucks, Old Trucks vs New Trucks

Updated 1-8-23

Phil’s view point on using old trucks. We try to avoid payment, keep our overhead low. This gives us the freedom to live and not panic if one of our businesses slows down. He sticks to the early 90s to late 90s trucks; they are simply better trucks. Much easier to work on.

The other thing we do is multiple streams of income.

⏱️⏱️Chapters⏱️⏱️
00:00 Why he would buy & drive an old vehicle
00:35 It’s all about math
01:00 He drives early 91-97 trucks because he can work on them
01:30 Get the same mileage deduction
02:15 How much maintenance do I do?
03:15 My personal opinon is…
03:55 Little secret he’s taken 4 vehicles oven 400,000 miles
04:15 We DON’T change the oil
04:35 Older vehicles you’re changing the oil as you go
05:10 Don’t change the air filter cause there isn’t one
06:15 Tip on automatic vehicles if you have ever overheated it
06:45 Keep the oil, change the filter
07:20 Thoughts on tires
07:55 Try to keep the tires all the same size on the rear, try on front
08:10 How many vehicles he recommends…Always want a backup
09:35 If going on a long trip, might rent or buy a nicer car for that
10:10 Buying AC in the winter and heaters in the summer-off season
11:00 Save a LOT of money, it’s just all math

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Why I drive old trucks versus new

Hi folks, I was going to talk to you today. It’s kind of business situation as far as vehicles, but it can also be with your personal use. And this is again my opinion, nobody’s paying me. And that is on vehicles, although I might hold a five $6,000 in my pocket or many thousands in the bank account.

At times, and other times not. I don’t drive fancy trucks, and it’s about math. For instance, this truck here is a dodge. I am not a Dodge proponent. I have driven. I have driven and I own dodge, Ford, Chevrolet, GMC.

To me, they’re all the same. It’s like a hammer. You don’t want to get a bullseye or laser on a hammer. So I’m going to tell you I drive early nineties through, say, 98 or 97 trucks because they have got the throttle body injection or some kind of fuel injection, and they have a lot of very dependable features.

So that’s why I picked those. I can work on them. I can change the ECU or the brain. I can fix most problems by just a little bit of forum research online, and I get the same deduction that a fancy truck does when it comes to mileage deductions.

And for instance, I paid 660 bucks for this truck and I tried to convince the guy to stay with it. So he had $60 a week payment, 660 bucks and said, Look, let me just try to get him, keep it.

So I just made the payments through him. I just gave him the money. I could have paid it off, but to try to get him to change his mind, like, Hey, I’ll pay you back. But he didn’t. And since that time, I’ve driven it.

Almost four years, he’s went through his family’s went through 20, I’ve been counting them, cause they rent from me, and he did work for me, 20 vehicles in the time I’ve driven this. Now this is going to throw everybody for a jump. How much maintenance I do. If something is breaking, I try to fix it.

We just fix a radiator hose and changed radiators. I’ve changed water pumps along the way. Yes, there are things that break. Guess what they do on the new vehicles, too. So I’m gonna tell you that any vehicle that you drive is going to require things to be fixed.

Every last one doesn’t matter what the brand is. The difference is whenever I pull up to a house, nobody’s expecting me to have to make enough money to pay for my 40,000 $30,000 truck. This is a $660 truck now.

I work on big fancy houses in really fancy neighborhoods. Yeah, they might look down on me a little bit, but once they know me, they know that I’m going to get the job done. It doesn’t matter what I’m driving.

If you got a rusty hammer, does that mean you need to go out and polish it? Does it drive a nail in better or a screw guy’s got dirt on? Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work? No. So what I’m going to tell you is my personal opinion is you don’t need to go to the new vehicles.

You can stay with the older ones and you can work on those from the most dependable ones are from 91 through 97. Just about any brand pickup. I don’t like anything with aluminum heads because if you overheat them, they warp. You can replace the parts pulling out yourself.

Do yourself. So I’m going to tell you stay with something a little older. If you want to save money, you’re going to get the same deduction if you’re in business per mile. Right to tell you another little secret. These old vehicles this has been on like 4 vehicles that I have taken over 400,000 miles.

This one will be 277,000. One thing I don’t do is change the oil. And I know everybody said change your oil every three thousand miles, every two thousand miles. And technically, these older vehicles. They leak oil. Or the burn it a little bit. So you’re changing, it’s changing the filter may not be changed.

And I think on this one. Because they gave me a filter with buying the oil. The oil was cheaper with the filter than it was with anything else. I might have changed the filter one time in this thing. So. I don’t live very far down a dirt road, the mobile home park that I’m buying, there’s pavement right up to it, there’s like 4-5 blocks of dirt road.

But I drive a lot on dirt roads, I’ll take something else on this one. I tried it, I don’t change the air filter because there isn’t one. Now, it does get, if you live on a real, dusty road, you drive a lot of dusty roads. Dust getting will cause that motor to wear. I just did an experiment on this one.

Whatever the filter got dirty, after I got it from the other guy, I said “Leave that thing out” Of course, it leaves a check engine light, so you. And some of your newer vehicles will just go into limp mode. But honestly, it has more to do with consistency and the type of vehicles. I think from the early to late nineties, all the trucks. They were making better trucks I think because they were threatened by the Japanese manufactures.

Tip, if you’ve ever overheated your in your vehicle. Don’t change the your oil in the transmission, ever. I don’t care if your driving a brand new car. If you overheated or if you don’t know, if it’s ever been overheated. DO NOT let them change the oil in your Automatic transmission because it will start slipping.

I mean it will, I was talking to somebody day before yesterday about that. And I’m telling you from experience, don’t change the automatic transmission fluid, keep the oil change the filter. Do not use new oil, it will break down all those parts and it will start slipping.

Do I use any specific oil? No, there’s nobody paying me to see that, obviously. But. I don’t use anything fancy because. Like high mileage oil or things like that, because it doesn’t seem to be anything but a catchall.

A way to get your money. When it comes to tires, I have about 4 or 500 tires and two tire machines and two balancers which I don’t bother to buy because this is a rough ride, no matter what all my trucks, I usually put air shocks on them because if I don’t 1500 pounds of tools in the back of the truck. Will caused it to bottom out all the time. I don’t particularly pick match tires. It would be neat to be nice, probably. But here’s what happened. I’ll go some dirt road and a piece of gravel will slam up inside the tire and cut one of those tires.

And guess what? I don’t have a matched set anymore, so I end up just driving. I try to keep them all the same size on the rear end and usually try to keep them the same size, front to back, but right now.

The ones in the front are taller than the ones in the back. We’re fixing to change them. That’s just the way it worked out. So as far as maintenance, you see something that’s getting ready to break you don’t want to breaking down on the side of the road.

You fix it. I recommend that you have if you have. Two drivers, a husband and wife or two in a business, you have three vehicles, at least three, you have one backup. When vehicle breaks, you have another one. If you just got one driver, guess what two vehicles. Two.

If you get something broke down. You got something to back up, and you can drive it until the other vehicle going. So you like, hey, you know, I can’t afford that with new vehicles. Well, there’s your, part of your math. Why I don’t drive new vehicles. But ultimately, I know of a family that was renting from me, bought a brand new Dodge Van and that thing was in the shop in the first year, probably. eight times. Now, I don’t think it’s just Dodge; it happens with Ford and Chevrolet too. And generally, they are all under warranty and they have all these things and go out. They had a transmission that was cracked.

It started leaking oil real bad. So that was after six months and eight months of driving it, it had a cracked transmission. And so, I really boil down to math. Maybe if I’m going on a long trip, I might rent a car. I might buy a nice car for my wife to drive across the country or something, but.

Like her to drive across the country. But either way. Driving around in the local area, I carried two bags of tools that are just mechanical tools. And I have other trucks to back up. I have 26 trucks right now. I’ll probably be driving a box van next. No guarantees. So I buy air conditioners in the wintertime, I buy heaters in the summer. I buy them used.

OK. I buy my. James, you’re not keeping the stuff in the back. You didn’t do it, anyway. I buy a. My winter clothes in the summer at thrift stores like jumpsuits and coveralls for in the winter, in the summer.

It’s in there, nobody’s buying like, why are you buying a big, heavy canvas coat. Cause it’s cheaper save a lot of money, buy electric heaters for people that say, Hey, I’ve got a really cold spot in my house.

Like here, here’s a heater, and I bought it for $3. Yes. So you buy your air conditioners in the dead of the winter. You’ve seen many junk stores. You buy your clothes. See I wear out these shirts all the time if my wife sees a spot she just throws them away. And I used to use them for rags, when I did more mechanicing. So it’s just really basic math, if you break it down, it’s math, there’s no way you’re going to be able to argue with me.

Say, if you say, Oh well, I get to write off the full value over a five-year depreciation. So you go and you buy a 40,000 dollar utility bed truck and you got the payments. You make the interest and you do all that stuff.

Then you, like, appreciate the whole value of 40,000 over five years. It’s a lot of the tax deduction. You got to have enough profit to need that kind of tax deduction. But guess what? When you trade that truck in to get another one, so you get the whole deduction again.

So now it’s worth 20,000. It’s probably worth more, but say, 20,000 when you trade it in and the value of that goes toward the new trade in that’s called capital gains because you done deducted the whole amount. Guess what you’re paying taxes on that capital gains.

So it’s all math. Figure out what you guys can use of what I do, but this is what I’ve been doing for a long, long time. Bye

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