So I’m looking to buy a used F150 for a work truck; there’s a good chance I’ll only need it for the next year, but for the next 7 months, it’ll be an everyday truck with a heavy load in the back. I’m looking at two possibilities: a 2017 (4WD) with 146000 miles and a 2020 (RWD) with 166000 miles.
The newer truck essentially has 85000/year on it. The older truck has 25000/year on it. They’re both basically listed for the same price. If I went with the newer one (which has been at the dealership since August), I’d probably try to talk the dealer down a couple thousand (to the lower end of the blue book range).
So am I crazy for even considering a two-year-old truck with 166,000 miles on it?
The usual way somebody puts 80K miles a year on something is by driving fast. Like mostly freeway, and little surface street. All else equal freeway miles are much easier on a vehicle than are surface street miles.
If the truck was used for something like local / semi-local deliveries where it was in motion 6 hours a day 5 days a week in suburbia that could also get you 80K low-speed miles. But even those are not as hard as offroad miles or stuck-in-the-mud / snow events.
All else equal 4WD has a lot more life-limited parts than does RWD. If you don’t need 4WD, actively avoid buying it.
I’d be a lot more concerned about differences in abuse, latent damage, corrosion, and their oil change / maintenance history than I’d be about the simple issue of miles / year.
Said another way, don’t confuse “easy to assess” with “useful to assess”.
The correct answer is: Get them both inspected. Anything we tell you here is no more than a statistical average of what to expect. The high mileage on both of those trucks is enough they neither would be considered “typical” usage and so the probability of what you will get is going to vary wildly depending on what that actual usage was.
Getting a believable answer out of a dealership is … not likely. The only way to get a glimpse for real is to have a good mechanic give them a once-over. Not a $20 once-over, but an honest look that may cost 100 to 150 (or more depending on your location). They’ll be able to assess a whole mess of things you’re not trained to recognize because they work on them every day.
Both helpful answers, thanks! I checked the carfax on the 2020, and it looks like they got an oil change every 4000-6000 miles almost-religiously, sometimes three times in a calendar month. Longest stretch between oil changes was 10000 miles and that was just the one time.
Proud owner of a 2000 F-150 4X4. (I purchased it in 2015. Only 90K miles and rust-free. $4500.)
I’ve owned dozens of older vehicles, and mileage in-and-of-itself is not a huge factor for me. I am much more concerned if the oil has been regularly changed. When it comes to oil changes, I might actually be more concerned about a vehicle with 30K miles than a car with 130K miles, because there’s a chance the oil in the former was never changed.
Pull the dipstick. Look at the oil on the dipstick. Is it full? Wipe some of it onto a paper towel and look at the color. If they claimed the oil was changed last week, it better look pretty clean and it better be full. Does the oil look foamy or have a milky color? If so, that could be a sign of trouble. And smell it. Does it smell burnt?
Do the same for the oil cap. Look at the underside of the cap, and peer down into the hole. Does anything look amiss? Do you see foam? Is there a burnt smell?
Ask where the truck is normally parked. Look at the ground. Look for evidence of fluid leakage.
Another biggie with me is whether or not the vehicle was used for towing. I will never buy a truck, van, or car that was regularly used for towing. So look at the rear of the truck. Is there a Class 2 or Class 3 tow hitch on the back? Not necessarily a deal breaker, but that would give me pause.
Follow-up question that’s been on my mind this afternoon: All else being equal, is 166,000 miles over two years worse than 166,000 over, say, seven years? Does miles being put on a car quickly “hurt” more than having them put on over more years, especially if it’s serviced regularly with consistent oil changes and assuming the miles are highway?
At this point, I don’t even want to pay to have the 2020 inspected if 85,000 miles/year for two years is just a deal-breaker. I looked at it (didn’t have a chance to drive it) today and it looks like it’s been extremely well taken care of. Cosmetically it’s top-notch, but is 166,000 miles over two years just simply insane? Or can modern-day F-150s take it? Again, I know I need to get an inspection, but I’d love for anyone with some degree of knowledge to let me know if I’m just pissing $200 away to even get this truck inspected.
As a former gear head mechanic, my view is the rate of accumulation is virtually immaterial.
components wear as a function of revolutions or as a function of age. 166000 miles is the same revolutions whether done in one long drive of ~2700 continuous hours (= ~ 4 months) at e.g. 60mph or in 2700 one hour drives spread over years. In general cold parts wear a bit faster than temperature stabilized parts, so the 2700 short drives would be slightly more wearing. Assuming nothing is allowed to overheat of course.
Highway miles are better = less wearful than city miles. Less braking, less shifting, more time at steady moderate RPM, neither zooming nor idling, etc.
The things that get old, not worn, are mostly plastic or sheet metal. The plastic dries and embrittles and/or gets fried by solar UV, sheet metal rusts, paint breaks down under the solar onslaught, wiring insulation breaks down, etc. For that category of problem, newer is always better and mileage is almost immaterial.
And of course for the 7 or 8 year old vehicle rubber parts are going to suffer from chemical deterioration [besides any wear on the parts] and the vehicle is going to rust and paint deteriorate from sitting out in the weather all those years.
I was going to come here and say that a 2020 vehicle was probably bought in 2019, and that your 85,000 average was a little high, since the car is actually 2.5 years old. So more like 64,000/year.
But looking at the Carfax report, it turns out it’s actually worse, not better, since 163,000 miles were put on it in 18 months, for an average of almost 109,000/year. And it’s been sitting around unsold since May 2022.
So although @LSLGuy’s points about age vs. wear certainly apply, the fact that no one has wanted to buy it for almost a year looks like a red flag to me.
Caveat: I’ve never owned a truck, and know almost nothing about them.
According to the Carfax, it was built in June 2020, originally sold three months later.
And it was sold at auction from the original owner in May 2022. About 16/17 months after they purchased it.
Actually closer to 350 miles a day, including weekends, based on the fact it was driven for 16/17 months and has 167000 miles.
No freaking idea, and that’s why I’m trying to figure out if it’s foolish to even pay to get this thing inspected. I’d love to have a car that’s under three years old for work, but I just don’t know what all those miles in such a short period of time can do to a truck.
I would hazard this is most likely because the average vehicle purchaser sees the high mileage and responds “hell, no”, rather than thinking it through logically as in this thread. Not a mechanic, but I concur with those who say “not a dealbreaker”, for all the reasons given. The other factor is, if it’s been unsold for almost a year the dealer is more likely to give you a discount off their advertised price, just to get it off their lot.
And according to the Carfax, it’s really only been sitting on a lot unsold since September 2022. The rest of the time it’s spent in customs (coming from Canada) and at auction. So it hasn’t necessarily been just sitting around unsold, unwanted and unloved since May 2022. The current dealer acquired it in July 2022, and put it for sale two months later.
Just to reinforce my previous point slightly - that’s still a long time to be sitting on the lot from a dealer’s perspective, I believe. In general dealers would rather sell a lot of stock at a relatively low profit per unit, than little stock at a higher profit per unit. At this point they are probably wondering if it will ever sell, and may be willing to accept only slightly more than what they paid for it. But yeah, get an inspection done - that goes a long way towards removing the risk (at a relatively low cost) of the reason for it not having sold being that it has lots of problems that previous prospective purchasers have identified.
I say this because the chip shortage turned the business upside down for the past few years. I broke a timing belt in my car and therefore ended up looking for a gently used truck in late 2021. Every lot had just a few vehicles, and there was no bartering at all–if you wanted it, you paid what they asked for it, immediately.
Yeah, I’ve been told there’s not much room for negotiation in the used car market these days from others as well. Still, this one’s been sitting there for six months…
(I purchased it in 2015. Only 90K miles and rust-free. $4500.)