Truck trade-in shock
 

I was looking to buy a Subaru Forester, a compromise vehicle that my wife would find tolerable during long trips, but with a decent amount of ground clearance to navigate in the woods.

The dealer offered me only $8500 for my F350 diesel! I stormed out of the dealership, came home and looked up the Blue Book ...it's only $10200! I paid $30,000 for the damned thing! I thought the salesman was ripping me off, but the deal was more reasonable than I thought. The salesman WAS ripping me off, with no end-of-model year discount. Just not as much of a ripoff.

I guess with diesel $.80 over gas, the trade in values have to suffer. The moral of the story? I'm going to keep driving the diesel until the wheels fall off.

With trucks its always best to just drive em' till they fall apart, and with a properly maintained American truck that can be a very long time.

I recently sold my truck and only got $6500 for it but mine was only $20k new.

it used to be that trucks would hold their value better than cars but now with crazy gas prices, I know I got hit pretty hard by getting rid of my truck but my timing was terrible.

nissan and dodge both have 40 percent off MSRP right now. that tells you how bad the truck market is right now. I would say that if you don't need to get rid of your truck, then I wouldn't.

Better time to be getting a truck if you thought you needed one.

I would love a new truck, but the reality is if I bought a new car I estimate with reduced usage I can probably get at least another 10 - 15 years of reliable usage out of it (the truck). My 74 Chevy had over 300,000 miles on it when I finally sold it. The Beast currently has just over 150,000 miles, and Rusty has almost 190,000 miles.

-Jay

Sludgy, I almost feel your pain luckily for me I seen this coming in 05 and sold my truck for nearly what I paid for it. You could always try and trade it for a Cummins if someone is willing to do that. They can easily achieve over twenty with the right tuning and mods.

If I were you I would keep it and buy a beater gas saver unless you already have one.

I saw my old '94 K-Blazer today. It still looks as awesome as ever, solid black - carbon fiber taillights, retrofitted rear air deflector (stock looking wing) - it was a beautiful truck that I thought was great. When I sold it, it was 9 years old and I traded for a 2003 Civic Hybrid.

First thing out of the wife's mouth when I was screaming, "There's MY old Blazer!" was, "Aren't you glad you got rid of that thing?". I got $5600 for it back then.

I know the feeling. I once saw my old 1980 Bonneville wagon 5 years after we sold it. I pulled up to a fuel station and I immediately recognized it. I pulled up to the pump next to it, and talked to the guy when he came back out from paying for his gas. I told him that I had learned to drive in that car. He insisted that it could not have been my car - he had bought it from a junkyard. He was really proud that it had "only 98,000 miles". I told him that I had personally been driving the car when it flipped to 100k, and when we sold it the car had 180,000 miles. He still insisted that it wasn't my car because he said it ran too well to have that kind of mileage on it. I then started to rattle off all of the car's quirks... fuel gauge not working right, left signal didn't cancel, etc. He then opened the glove box. Dad was a man who kept every reciept. The guy started pulling work orders out of the glovebox with my old address on them! He said it was the best car he ever bought. I was glad it was rescued from the junkyard and went to someone who enjoied and respected it.

-Jay

Not what I'd want for a 100 mile/day commute, but for what it is, 18+ mpg ain't too shabby! Maybe consider a little car for day to day driving, and save the truck for trips or other specialized use...don't think a Forester would save enough over what you have to make it worth getting rid of...

My bro sells small import cars. He has customers that come in and buy a compact, and park their truck until times like right now, when gas prices plummet.

That's if you have the space to park multiple cars.

MA4T