Ok, here goes, even though it might be a bit long please read and give me your advice.

I have a 1985 Freightliner Day cab, (The one in my avatar) I haul logs for a living. This is a spring ride truck. It has the original motor in it (rebuilt several times) 350 Big Cam Cummins that uses and leaks between 1 and 2 gallons of oil per week. It gets 5 to 5.5 mpg. 370 rears with a 15 speed deep reduction overdrive eaton fuller trans

Since I bought it August 06, and started hauling October 06, I have had to replace or repair several items which is normal for a Truck this Old.

It has a bouncing up and down from 42 to 50 that is what they call Frame Whip and cannot be changed. It drove me nuts to start with, but now I have learned to live with it.

My Truck is not in bad shape body wise on the outside or inside.

Here is my question:

I am trying to make a decision to either upgrade to a newer 1998 to 2002 or would you just keep what I have now and re do it when it comes time to get it done?????

What would you do and why???

 

get u a freigthliner,,, detroit's are the best engines out there.......

 

If the truck is in good shape, I would keep it and save my money until I could pay cash for something newer. Right now you have a truck which is paid for and don't need to worry about making payments. If you save your money for a year or two you could buy something newer and pay cash. :?

 

It's a nice looking truck,...bad karma to dump off a dependable friend,...I'd run it into the ground, or at least until I could no longer fix it.

 

That is hard to say really, it all depends on what you want, you have to figure out if it is worth it to put money into that truck and keep it, for the kind of work you do it would be ok, If you really like the truck then I would say keep it, but keep in mind that with a truck that age you will always have things that need to be fixed

I was in the same boat as you, I have a 97 w900, I thought about keeping it and doing the engine, but I decided to sell it while I could still get decent money for it and ordered a new one,

 

With your current truck you know what you've got.

If you buy a different one you may just be trading one set of problems for another - with a payment book thrown in too!

There ain't anything on a truck that "can't be fixed".

 

Those old mechanical Cummins engines are fairly cheap to rebuild. It would boil down to how much down time the truck was costing me. If it's not killing you with down time, the minor repairs are probably not costing that much and just because you get a new"er" truck doesn't mean the minor repairs stop.

One thing an old sawmiller told me once. He didn't have a lot of new equipment. What he said was, he might have to spend a little extra money on the older equipment in repairs, but most of the time, he could choose when he spent the money (unless of course it completely broke down in the middle of the job). If he bought new stuff, those payments come due on a scheduled basis with no regard as to whether your business has been slow or not.

Another thing is, your most likely running local where you probably have a local shop to work on the truck...or possibly do it yourself. If you were running OTR where you wouldn't have much choice but to get raped everytime the truck had a problem, then I would recommend getting a better truck.

 

That is the way I was leaning toward, keeping it until it laid down on me, which I hope is for a couple of more years.

At that point, I may decide to just keep it and rebuilt it, just have to wait and see.

I would love to have a newer truck, but the payments and more cost of insurance keep me from thinking much about this right now.

I appreciate all the advice and wisdom from everyone.

 

It is usually cheaper to rebuild an engine than buy a new truck. At least if you rebuild it you will know exactly what you have. When you buy another truck you don't necessarily know what you are getting. If you can start putting money aside now, you will have enough to make major repairs or replace the truck, as you desire.

 

Run it til it Dies