"New" truck

I have a 2004 Ford Ranger that I bought new, and it has been a good truck for me over the past 3 years, but recently I've realized that I need something bigger to do some of the things I need done around the house.  When I lived in Charleston I had a very small yard and a "no-maintenance" house so I could get away with a smaller truck that I only occasionally used to haul stuff.  But now I have a home that was built in 1970 (which I love) and a half-acre yard (which I am starting to think is a pain in the @$$), and that means lots of projects and sometimes I need a truck that will easily haul a big load of lumber/mulch/dirt/rocks/whatever.  But, I hate making car payments, and I don't really need a "highway worthy" truck anymore because I don't have to use the Interstate to get around anymore.  (In Charleston you HAVE to use the Interstate just about every damn day).  So I started looking for an old truck that would meet the following criteria:

1) Must have a full size bed.  The single most annoying thing about my Ranger is that it only has a 6 foot long bed and that it isn't 4 feet wide between the tire wells.  Loading up 4x8 sheet goods is a pain in the ass.

2) Must be an automatic.  Look, if I knew how to drive a stick, I'd get one, but I never had one in the family to learn on, so I don't know how to drive one.  And I don't want to learn right now either.  Besides, it is very difficult to drink a beer while driving a stick shift.

3) Must have a decent engine.  My Ranger has a 3 liter V6.  If you filled the bed up with styrofoam it is overloaded.  So I only wanted to look at stuff that had a least a V8 or a good sized diesel engine.

4) Must have air conditioning. I live in Birmingham, Alabama.  It is already hot here and will get hotter every day until August.  It will then stay hot clear through September and on into October.  On a clear day you can of course roll down the windows, small comfort when it is 101 degrees, but anybody who has ever ridden a school bus on a hot rainy day in the south knows that HUMID + HOT + NO AC = PURE HELL ON EARTH.

5) Runs good and safe.  I'll buy an old truck, but not a damned death trap.  It's got to go when I push the gas, steer when I turn the wheel, and stop when I hit the brakes.  It doesn't have to run perfectly smooth or anything, but I'm not driving anything that makes me think it might stall out right when I try to make a left turn across traffic on Highway 280.  I've seen bad things happen in those situations.

Other than these criteria, I really could care less about anything else.  I didn't care what color it was, how many miles it had, if the radio works, dents in the fenders, none of that crap.  In fact the worse the truck looks the less bad I would feel about tossing 2x4s in the back.  If you miss one and drop it on the fender, who's going to know or care. 

I had been kicking this idea around for a month, and I looked at the classified ads in the paper occasionally, but I finally decided to get serious about my search this past weekend.  I went by CarMax to see what they would give me for my Ranger.  CarMax will buy your car from you even if you don't buy a car from them.  Just drive in, tell them you want to sell them your car and in about 20 minutes they will make you an offer.  They gave me a number that is more than what we owe, so that gave me a place to start as far as how much to spend on my "new" truck.  I wanted to try to spend less than the cash I would get back from CarMax, that way I wouldn't have to take any money out of pocket for the truck and I could kiss the next two years of Ranger payments goodbye.  I couldn't find anything at the CarMax lot that looked good to me, but I didn't expect to.  All of their trucks were a lot newer and nicer than what I was looking for.  So my wife and I headed out to search the small car lots and FSBO ads.

We had no luck on Sunday.  I saw several trucks that looked good to start, but then they were either underpowered or hideously broken.  On one of them I had to exit the truck via the passenger side door because the driver side door handle came off in my hand from the inside.  So that one wasn't going to cut it, obviously.  How safe is a truck that you can't get out of?  I was actually a little downhearted after several good leads and many hours worth of driving around town turned up nothing.  But yesterday (Monday) I resumed my search and found a small used car dealership about 20 minutes from work that had 4 trucks that sounded interesting.  Right after work the wife and I headed out to see what we could find.

Well, I found exactly what I was looking for and here are some pictures.  My wife put this up in her Picasa web album, so please don't blame the cheesy captions on me.  (By the way, Picasa is pretty damn sweet.  I just started playing with it but it is really easy to use, there aren't a ton of ads on the site, and it is free for up to 1 GB of storage.  That is a LOT of photos).

 

As you can see, I've already used it to pick up a load of rocks for landscaping.  I got the rocks on the way home from the car lot, I hadn't even gone home yet.  I don't think there is any way I could have hauled a half cubic yard of rock in my Ranger.  And I sure as hell had a heck of a time putting lumber and plywood in the back of it.  Those headaches are now a thing of the past.

 

The truck is a 1984 Dodge Ram 150 Royal SE (whew) with just 73,000 original miles.  The paint on it is in good shape, I'm sure the bed was repainted recently, and the interior looks good too.  No rips in the vinyl or anything.  I took it off the lot, with tax and title for a little less than what it says on the window.  What a bargain.  Now I just have to go back to CarMax and sell them my Ford Ranger.  I'll be getting rid of 2 years worth of car payments on the Ranger, getting back all the cash I spent on the truck plus a little left over for some repairs/upgrades to the truck.  I know it needs some tires, a cd player, and the seals on the AC need to be redone, but it runs good and shifts smoothly and that is what was most important to me.  The truck also has a V8 engine and a full size bed, and it drives great, so it hits all of the items I was looking for.

 

The bottom line is that I'm getting a bigger truck without having to put out any cash and I'm saving the car payments I would have to make over the next two years.  Even if I had to rebuild the motor and transmission and all that crap it would be less than making those payments.  Hot Damn!  I get a bigger truck with a V8 AND I save money?  I think I just busted one off in my shorts.

 

Hope you're having a great day, I know I am.