I'm in the market for a "new" (old, cheap) pickup truck to replace the one that I recently sold before it crumbled into a pile of rust.
(Please, no lectures about how un-mustachian pickup trucks are. I don't use mine for commuting; I use it for hauling firewood and typically put less than a thousand miles a year on it. I've done the math comparing truck costs to heating costs, and it pencils out in favor of owning a truck, as long as it's a cheap, old one. Plus I get free exercise).
I've been cruising craigslist for several weeks and I'm coming up empty. I'm running into two issues:
1) Any truck that doesn't have fairly serious issues is priced well above the KBB private party value and/or the NADA low retail value. Even some of the ones that do have issues are priced pretty high. The folks I've asked have been reluctant to back off much.
2) I have yet to encounter a seller who has owned the subject truck for more than a year. It seems everyone is a car flipper, off the books dealer, or someone who got buyer's remorse. So none of them are able to tell me much of anything meaningful about the history of the trucks.
Since it appears that I'm going to have to rely on my own inspection to determine whether the truck is something I want to buy, I'm wondering if I might as well go to a public car auction to see if I can get a better price. I've heard all the stories about how everything that is sold at auction is a total piece of junk that is just waiting to have a major mechanical failure while it is being driven home. But is an auction car any worse than something you would buy from a private party? I talking old stuff here - everything that I'm looking at is at least 12 years old.
Would you consider buying a car at an auction?