I buy and sell cars for extra income with good success. I do mechanic work on the side. I also pick up painting contracts and lately have picked up more and more carpentry and handyman work, and plan to buy my first property next year. I've used a Subaru Outback (300k miles) for a while, but it's really getting hard to use. You can only fit so many sheets of plywood before it gets dangerous, and I'm always a good 30 minute drive from any site I'm working on. I've been thinking of a truck for a while. I don't need it to haul cars, but it would open up some avenues to buy cars non-running to flip.
The, uh, proper sheet of plywood count in an Outback is about zero, right? :p I'm sure you can fit a few, but at least the year I had, they'd be pretty bent up by that bend in the back seats. Maybe run a few 2x4s to create a flat surface first?
Just wondering what folks think about such a big truck.
It's a big truck. This is the wrong forum to be asking about trucks on, because there's an insane hatred of all varieties of trucks here by a decent chunk of posters.
If you're going to drive a large truck, learn to drive it properly - and that means both being able to get it through halfway tight spaces, and recognizing that, you know, there are just some places you don't fit. Park in the back of the lot, and if you're at a home improvement store with a large load of supplies after checking out, go pull your truck around into the loading bay to load stuff in. That's what it's there for, and an awful lot of the time, you'll get help loading.
Be aware that "It fits, it flies!" doesn't really apply to large trucks. You can easily overload them. Not going to say I've never done it, but the right answer for many things is a trailer. A good flatbed with sides might work very well for you - lower to put stuff on, you can roll cars on (get a 12V winch up front and some ramps, and you can load just about anything), and if you've got the sides on, you can haul bulk material easily enough. Unfortunately, I think a good flatbed will cost more than the truck you're looking at. Spend the coin on a good brake controller, it's an awful lot cheaper than trailer tires.
Fuel economy sucks, handling sucks. That's a given. You said it's got toolboxes on the back, so make sure that hasn't narrowed the bed down enough that you can't fit what you need. Get an empty weight as-is, because I guarantee those are an awful lot heavier than the bed it came with, and you may be slightly surprised how little of a gap to GVWR there is.
Go through and do a lot of maintenance on it when you get it - just assume that almost anything that has a recommended replacement interval hasn't. At a minimum, replace most of the ignition system (plugs, wires, cap, rotor, and maybe see if you can get the coil tested), swap out the fluids, including the rear diff fluid and coolant, and while you're up there, take a pretty good look around. You'll learn quickly about the "truck tax" on parts - if you're used to working on cars, everything seems to cost 4x what you're used to (at least for my truck).
Otherwise, it's a truck. If you're using it for truck things, they work well. Just, go find a truck forum for questions about it.
