Tips and Tricks on Buying Your First Truck (Owner Operator, Brands, Old vs New, Beginner Truck)

thinking of becoming an owner operator well in today's video we're going to give you tips on how to buy your first truck [Music] so what is the optimal truck to purchase what are you supposed to be looking at as a driver are you looking at the beauty of the truck are you looking at the fuel consumption are you looking at how comfortable the cab is should you buy new versus used luxury versus affordable what amenities do you prioritize and what is the optimal budget for the truck we received a variety of answers for these questions from our drivers the problem with trucks is that it costs a lot of money to maintain them and you have to be prepared to spend money to fix them so it doesn't really matter whether you get a brand new one or a used one you know eventually they want to break down and you have to have money put put on the side to make sure that in case something happens uh you know you'll be able to get it fixed and get back on the road because if the truck is not moving regardless whether it's new or used you're not making any money so the question is really you know how well was maintained and that you can find out before you actually lease a truck or buy a truck you can get a printout i think for the last three years he's supposed to get a printout or from the day that the truck was manufactured and from the day the company bought it the way it was maintained you can see actually exactly what they've been doing to it and from there you have you have an idea you know what else can you know can i get wrong be realistic as to what you want very few guys come into this industry and they will buy the big boat and and get the big boat right out the gate my first truck was i think 40 grand and i ran that for a couple of years to learn the business you know to learn how to become an owner operator to learn the ins the outs get the responsibilities um i ran that for three years and then i've cashed that in for the the nicer trade just worked i worked my way up until i was eventually able to buy a brand new truck but i didn't i wasn't able to do that right off right off the hop it took me four five trucks to get the brand new one well this is the fifth truck so it took me flipping four to get the and that's a lot of years but that's also a lot of learning every time you get a new truck you learn something new financing fuel rebates engines displacements it's the list is just never ending you'll never know everything it's impossible so try if you can to learn a little bit about everything instead of knowing a lot about just one thing try to spread it out what you know my point of view or older truck is better uh like uh right now i'm driving my peterbilt it's 96 uh model and uh it has no dpf and no e-logs but i recommend still older trucks because like in new trucks there's so many problems going on that's why i prefer uh older trucks going for a newer truck versus an older truck i've been there done that with the older truck two years back i tried doing a leash this operate but it was an old uh 1992-93-ish flfld i only spent like 15 000 on the truck but in a very short time it cost me about 25 to 30 000 in repairs and i even had weeks where i wasn't paying myself because of all the repairs i think somewhere between the uh 60 and 80 000 on a used truck is a a good spot to do and if you get too old you get kind of have a lot of breakdowns you get to go too new your your payments are going to be that much more and these ones here i think it's more sitting in kind of like in the middle there many mechanics know about freightliner modern other trucks it's one of the commonest trucks in north america that's why i went for it and i love it i would go for new truck when you buy a new truck you have a question mark it depends on your luck because you never know what to laugh on you know when you get a new truck you end up paying more money for it because it's brand new if you buy a used truck it's going to be cheaper but then again you may have problems so as long as you put money on the side and you take care of it the best you can you can't control what's going to happen but at least you can control what you have and how you take care of it i picked the freightliner because they have the most shops out there and you know there's so many freightliner shops so if you know if i need a part you know i can just pull in and you know they'll be able to fix that now you can't find a lot of peeler builds shops dealerships as many as you can find as a freightliner even caleb in my opinion all trucks are the same it's up to the driver to take care of it sure some are nicer inside because of the interior but you know you're not going to live in the truck you know you're basically going to be driving so if you want to spend weeks living in it then it's a different story but if you're planning to drive every day then it doesn't really matter what kind of truck you're getting as long as you mix your money and that's the whole thing is to make money you want a decent fridge um you know but that's usually an after-market option the trucks you know so some trucks are sold most trucks are sold without it you got to pay extra for that but if you're buying your first truck and it's a used truck chances are there's a fridge in it you'll want power inverters these are all just little things that you know are going to save you down the down the road a microwave microwave if you can get trucks with this stuff in it and it's incorporated into the cost of the truck when you buy it and you're not having to go out of pocket afterwards it really helps out in the long run i look for just the the truck was maintained i didn't have to worry about it with this truck because like i said this one was new um but my previous trucks you know you'll want to make sure that they're not abused take oil samples take differential oil samples take transmission oil samples and pay to have them done and and see what those samples come back at you can tell the way the previous owner drove the truck by what those three samples will tell you a good technician will be able to to be able to read that and and relay that information to you but right now uh like you have a bunk heater so you can shut off your engine and then you can put your heater on and warm up at night i recommend before like if they wanted to buy a fast truck it's better you buy a freelancer or a volvo because they are easy to drive and they are cheaper than a peter bell or kenworth fertilizers are known to be cheaper when it when you do have to repair versus uh peterbilt um you take a peterbilt to a shop you're a bare minimum of a thousand dollars whereas a freightliner probably not so much the other company i worked for just for the the climate control used to be replaced was like almost two thousand dollars and the same controls and the freight line is like three hundred dollars the new engines all came in in like 2008 2009 with the def the dpf and all that so our our our industry has drastically changed as previous uh prior to 2008. um horsepower is not the big thing anymore a lot of people think oh i gotta go out and get a 550 horsepower blah blah blah you don't these new engines these new trucks um you can buy a 13 liter engine with 455 horsepower it'll be you can have you can have it adjusted and you can have the torque rating set and if you do it properly a 455 horsepower engine will pull just as well as a 500 horsepower engine as long as that one's been set up properly and you will get better fuel efficiency out of it freightliner has gone a long ways to make the equipment a little better that you know obviously back in the day it wasn't as good as as it is now but equipment wise they're getting better it's just you know just a just a name uh at the end of the day you know it's just a truck and it's your job to take care of it and it's your job to make sure that you know if anything happens before it happens you know fix it a lot of drivers don't want to be cheap and they want to fix things when when it breaks down but i'm the opposite i like to spend more money maintaining it because i know i don't want to i don't want to break down on the road you know what learn to drive the truck learn to be an owner operator learn to go down the highway learn to do learn the business there's the trucking business and then there's the business of trucking learn a little bit about both well there you have it i hope you enjoyed this video let us know reply in the comments which truck would you purchase what year make and model and what's the reason behind why you're thinking about that truck well if you haven't already please subscribe to our channel if you're enjoying these videos we produce weekly content on trucking related topics hope to see you in the next one

Channel: ET Transport

Views: 23,968

Rating: 4.927928 out of 5

Keywords: tips and tricks on buying your first truck, how to buy your first semi truck, owner operator first truck how to buy, buying old vs new semi truck, owner operator truck lease, best truck to buy for owner operator, best truck for new owner operator, trucking owner operator guide, trucking how to become owner operator, trucking buying first truck, trucking truck for beginners, trucking how to buy truck, owner operator first truck, trucking buy first truck, what truck to lease

Id: vcHB-4z3EjU

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020