Author Topic: A $100,000 pick up truck  (Read 13561 times)

paddedhat

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Re: A $100,000 pick up truck
« Reply #50 on: October 13, 2017, 03:05:43 PM »
Folks ought to price what it costs to repair those diesel engines when something breaks.

A fuel injector from the aftermarket can be $500.

x 8 if you really had some bad luck...

$1200 for an diesel injector pump.

$500 for a turbo.

Labor not included.

For me this wouldn't matter. And it might not even be Un-Mustachio. Gadzooks how?

When I am on a customers site, I bill most of them 15 bucks an hour for the truck. Yeah that's right. it sits there an makes me money and maybe twice a year I need the 4-wheel to look at some piece of junk in the corner of some  idiots facility that, because they didn't maintain it, now they want a "real" engineer to look at it and tell them to fix it. 

You guys need to understand the difference between  real work trucks are profit centers for the contractor and ego trucks.

If I didn't have a real truck and instead had say a Yaris, I couldn't bill the 15, it would be considered unreasonable. I am paid to play by my customers rules.

Wonder how many here wouldn't know a bro-dozer from a piperliner's rig, since they often look similar. Wonder how many would even imagine that the pipeliner uses that oversized flashy pickup to generate $2-300K a year in billable hours?

trollwithamustache

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Re: A $100,000 pick up truck
« Reply #51 on: October 13, 2017, 04:29:49 PM »
Folks ought to price what it costs to repair those diesel engines when something breaks.

A fuel injector from the aftermarket can be $500.

x 8 if you really had some bad luck...

$1200 for an diesel injector pump.

$500 for a turbo.

Labor not included.

For me this wouldn't matter. And it might not even be Un-Mustachio. Gadzooks how?

When I am on a customers site, I bill most of them 15 bucks an hour for the truck. Yeah that's right. it sits there an makes me money and maybe twice a year I need the 4-wheel to look at some piece of junk in the corner of some  idiots facility that, because they didn't maintain it, now they want a "real" engineer to look at it and tell them to fix it. 

You guys need to understand the difference between  real work trucks are profit centers for the contractor and ego trucks.

If I didn't have a real truck and instead had say a Yaris, I couldn't bill the 15, it would be considered unreasonable. I am paid to play by my customers rules.

Wonder how many here wouldn't know a bro-dozer from a piperliner's rig, since they often look similar. Wonder how many would even imagine that the pipeliner uses that oversized flashy pickup to generate $2-300K a year in billable hours?

Ha! Oh, this mostly desk engineer is absolutely driving a Bro-dozer with my logo on it.  After commercial insurance ect, I'm not making that much over say 10-15% return on the beast so I'm very ok with that.  Its funny, with an old car when I first went out on my own, I got lots of crap over expensing mileage as "travel" made me more expensive. The Truck charges are for some reason not only palatable but encouraged!

Rig welders get mostly low to mid 20s for the rig.  Almost any engineered construction/electrical contractor here bills 12-15 an hour for a basic truck. Tool trucks are low 20s, the big flatbed delivering stuff seems to be a couple hundred a day flat rate? (I don't see that many invoices anymore). An E-350 van to haul your crew around in seems to be billable for 400 or more a week.

Its called capital equipment for a reason right?

 

Syonyk

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Re: A $100,000 pick up truck
« Reply #52 on: October 13, 2017, 07:39:44 PM »
That said, an foolish coworker of mine decided that this was a great vehicle for commuting 50 miles round trip each day.  Only 68K list! A bargain at 62K!

Oof.  That's an awful lot of miles a year for a big truck as a personal vehicle - and that's work miles only, so it'll probably end up with 15k-20k/yr on it.  I've put... uh, about 3k miles/yr on my truck in the 3.5 years or so I've had it, and that includes 3500 miles of cross country trip to pick up some family furniture (and visit family), plus a few 1000 mile round trips while we were moving (any time we were visiting family  where we were moving, we took a load of boxes and stuff out - we moved ourselves this last move, so moving stuff ahead of time was useful).  And I didn't spend nearly that much on my truck...

Folks ought to price what it costs to repair those diesel engines when something breaks.

Eh, the guys buying $100k trucks don't care.  It's under warranty for a lot of the time they own it, and they're generally unlikely to keep it past 100-150k miles - not much goes wrong by that time.

When it gets resold a time or two and actually needs injectors and such, the aftermarket is likely to have the details worked out.  And, it's generally rare to need a full set unless they're just really high mileage (300k+).  Usually it's an electrical issue and you can get a rebuilt unit.  A set of 8 for my truck runs $1100-$1400, unless I want to go with high performance exotica (which I don't - I'll probably bump up a step and get a chip when I replace them, but that's hopefully many, many years off).

And, an awful lot of guys who own older trucks (myself included) do their own work.  Partly because it's stupid-expensive to let someone else do it, partly because most of us don't trust other people to wrench on our vehicles.

But, yes, a big truck is more expensive to maintain than a small car.  Doesn't bother me, and doesn't bother the people I know with other large trucks (our "10k" lb church trailer is exclusively hauled by 7.3 Powerstrokes at the moment) because we use them as trucks, and don't drive them around as a car.  Mostly - I've noted either in this thread or elsewhere that I will take my truck to town if my wife has the car and the weather is particularly nasty.

Wonder how many here wouldn't know a bro-dozer from a piperliner's rig, since they often look similar. Wonder how many would even imagine that the pipeliner uses that oversized flashy pickup to generate $2-300K a year in billable hours?

If it's got stacks in the bed, it's a BroDozer? :D

FINate

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Re: A $100,000 pick up truck
« Reply #53 on: October 13, 2017, 09:04:48 PM »
I'm going to guess that you have absolutely zero first hand experience with modern / expensive trucks.  I wouldn't buy them, but most of what you're saying is simply wrong.

Seriously.  The aluminum/EcoBoost F150 is far, far more fun to drive and capable than any truck with that sort of tow rating ought to be...

I wouldn't buy it, but I got it as a rental once and flogged it on some mountain roads I was familiar with.  Bonkers how well it went up twisty roads, and then just for fun I took it down the back way, which is a properly rutted dirt trail.  It handled both wonderfully, and got 20+mpg in the process.  Not great for a small car, but insanely good for a truck that can tow up to 12k lbs in some configurations.

I grew up with Ford and back in those days they handled like a shopping cart.  I recently bought a used (newish, but pre aluminum) low-mileage F150 ecoboost and have to agree, modern trucks handle quite well for being so off road capable. Quiet, responsive, none of the play in the steering I remember from days of yore. Yet still with proper four wheel drive, elocker differential and great towing. Average about 18 mpg which is decent for a truck, but doesn't really matter to me since it's only used for camping, hunting, and such. Most days I run errands around town and make the school runs with my kids using an electric cargo bike, so typically gets driven than 15 miles/week.

Syonyk

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Re: A $100,000 pick up truck
« Reply #54 on: October 13, 2017, 10:11:42 PM »
I grew up with Ford and back in those days they handled like a shopping cart.  I recently bought a used (newish, but pre aluminum) low-mileage F150 ecoboost and have to agree, modern trucks handle quite well for being so off road capable. Quiet, responsive, none of the play in the steering I remember from days of yore. Yet still with proper four wheel drive, elocker differential and great towing. Average about 18 mpg which is decent for a truck, but doesn't really matter to me since it's only used for camping, hunting, and such. Most days I run errands around town and make the school runs with my kids using an electric cargo bike, so typically gets driven than 15 miles/week.

My F350 makes a shopping cart look nimble.  1997, last of the OBS diesels.

Don't ever test drive an aluminum body one.  They're crazy good.  The EcoBoost motor drives like a diesel until you get on it hard, then it winds up like a sports car motor.  Ford build a winner, as far as I'm concerned, with that motor series.

You've got a proper locker?  Jealous.  I've got a limited slip in the rear of mine, but it's a mild limited slip.  I can still spin one if I'm stuck, but it's harder.  Works well on slick roads, works barely better than an open in actually nasty stuff.

The electric cargo bike is a great option.  I still need to build a high speed cargo runner, but I live on a 55mph road, and run 15 miles into town, which is pushing the limits of ebike quite a bit.  Having crashed a motorcycle recently into a truck that turned left in front of me (coming the other way) hasn't helped my ambitions, TBH.  I figure 30-35mph is sane for a long frame cargo bike, but that's still running my current motor pretty hard, and if I'm heavy, that's brutal on the brakes.

I've been trying to go into town less.  Wife and daughter do it a lot (enough that I plan to pick them up a used Leaf), but I pretty much head into town for church, a men's breakfast once a week, and to haul stuff for the property.  So, close to $1000 of plywood and lumber and paint and associated stuff last weekend...

FINate

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Re: A $100,000 pick up truck
« Reply #55 on: October 14, 2017, 10:42:38 AM »
My F350 makes a shopping cart look nimble.  1997, last of the OBS diesels.

Don't ever test drive an aluminum body one.  They're crazy good.  The EcoBoost motor drives like a diesel until you get on it hard, then it winds up like a sports car motor.  Ford build a winner, as far as I'm concerned, with that motor series.

You've got a proper locker?  Jealous.  I've got a limited slip in the rear of mine, but it's a mild limited slip.  I can still spin one if I'm stuck, but it's harder.  Works well on slick roads, works barely better than an open in actually nasty stuff.

The electric cargo bike is a great option.  I still need to build a high speed cargo runner, but I live on a 55mph road, and run 15 miles into town, which is pushing the limits of ebike quite a bit.  Having crashed a motorcycle recently into a truck that turned left in front of me (coming the other way) hasn't helped my ambitions, TBH.  I figure 30-35mph is sane for a long frame cargo bike, but that's still running my current motor pretty hard, and if I'm heavy, that's brutal on the brakes.

I've been trying to go into town less.  Wife and daughter do it a lot (enough that I plan to pick them up a used Leaf), but I pretty much head into town for church, a men's breakfast once a week, and to haul stuff for the property.  So, close to $1000 of plywood and lumber and paint and associated stuff last weekend...

OBS brings back memories. Not sure about the trucks from the 90s, but those from the 80s had a distinctive cabin aroma...oil, perhaps mixed with the smell of interior trim breaking down, or something. Brings me back to childhood.

I watched the used market for months for a 4WD SuperCrew with 6.5' bed and a locker. Eventually ended up finding a good deal on a 2012 with 35k miles, though difficult to find because dealers don't know the details of their inventory...got to the point of just asking for pictures of door jamb stickers so I could get the rear differential codes. Surprising how many 4x4s have open diffs...what's the point? As you say, the locker is great for nasty stuff, for me that's mostly short stretches of USFS roads and the locker allows it really crawl up stuff in 4L. I'm finding that the locker alone is sufficient in many situations, so understand now why some folks get 2WD with a locker.

I don't plan on ever test driving the aluminum body F150 for the reasons you mention :)

We live in town so the electric assist cargo bike works really well for us. Can haul the whole family on it (wife and two kids), and the electric assist is great for getting all that mass going and for climbing moderate hills in town. Putting about 125 miles/week on it in nice weather. With lighter loads it's totally doable to go down the mountain to the next town and back.


 

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