The way a new truck pencils out is you buy a base model for $40k, drive it for five years with no need for repairs, and you sell it for $30k and repeat. Unless you have the mad skills to always find a clean used truck, drive it for a couple of years and sell it for what you have in it and replace with a similar vehicle, there is no way a used truck is going to pencil out as a better deal than a new truck depreciating $2k/yr for the first five years.
Yeah, but I farm. A new truck is new for about a week before it has it's first serious scratch. Three months later, the tailgate gets creased because a load shifts. A month after that the stupid front spoiler gets ripped off in a rut. After that, I quit babying it...
Ain't nobody wanting to buy MY 3 year old "near new" truck at "near new" prices.....
I don't ranch full time but my family does and I do run about 25 head of my own cattle. They run with my Dad's herd, all it takes is one cow to back into a fender or door to put a nice crease in it. I put a pencil to my used 99 Super Duty I purchased it for $15K 16 years ago, put 200K miles on the odometer and almost $10K in repairs both major and minor. That's 5 cents a mile to repair, or about $1,670 a year to own. I didn't include oil changes, license fees, or insurance in that costs, but for me that pencils better than any new pickup does.
I tried to find a $40K 2017 Tradesman diesel best I could do was $48,000 for a cab and chassis and $51,000 for a standard bed, before negotiations and incentives. The only 13 Tradesman trucks I found that was even close to $10K less than a new one all had less than 50K on the odometer. Any model year 13 Tradesman trucks 75K plus on the odometer were about half of a 17 base model Tradesman.
