Can you drive a 20+ year old beater truck in 2023 and keep forever?
Like if you don't care much about physical appearance and age of the vehicle but matters more on how they run and the price is much lower? I recently brought a 2002 GMC Yukon XL for $1,500 with 182k miles from a friend of mine. It runs and drives great, no rust since this is a SoCal truck, was taken care of, and I've changed oil and transmission fluid on those. I'm thinking if I can keep it for long periods of time cause I love my truck so much and I hate shelling out money on something brand new.
If you can do your own repairs and maintenance I don't see why not. I've been doing that kind of thing for ages. However if you have to run to a mechanic for every little thing that goes wrong the economics are not in your favor.
Can you drive a 20+ year old beater truck in 2023 and keep forever?
what do you mean "forever". Of course nothing lasts forever, and especially not a 20 year old GM that's nearing 200k. It's at the end of its lifetime.
It's going to be a money pit. The transmission will take a dump soon and that'll be the end of it, so don't shove too money into it. $1500 is a steal, so if it takes you to work for a year then you win.
A new one is $70,000. So If you can keep repairs under $68,499, you’ll come out ahead.
In other words, financially, of course your truck makes perfect sense. The thing that will get you is down time: every time something breaks, you’ll be without a car until it gets fixed.
But parts for that thing are cheap and widely available, and probably will be for a long time to come. Think about the previous generation (“OBS”) GM trucks. They are red hot right now and have the aftermarket support to match. That’s because those old trucks simply were better made than the new ones.
To make it work long term, you need to do 2 things:
- learn how to do service and repairs yourself. This will greatly shift the cost-benefit ratio in your favor (and after all is the raison d’etre for Scotty’s entire you tube channel
- start thinking now about how much you’re willing to put into it. When, say, the transmission goes, you should already know: “yes, put in a remanufactured one” or “no, just junk it”
Welcome to the forum!
Can you drive a 20+ year old beater truck in 2023 and keep forever?
Sure why not, as long don't spend bunch of money on a old beater.
Yes that was a very good deal for $1500. Those were solid trucks, and I have a bunch of friends that have variations on it, gmc or chevy, that have 350k+ miles, one friend has 430k miles, mostly road miles though.
Give it some serious TLC, and it could run for a while.
Nice to read from someone who likes old beaters! 👍
My advice is to drive that $1,500 beater until you have the money to buy a new or newer car CASH. You are stupid if you get a dadgum car loan and you are stupid on steroids if you lease/fleece.
what's wrong with financing if you get a good rate?