If the truck in question is a work stripper model, not a fancy suburban assault vehicle, it’s almost not even in the same market as the used cars & trucks that we all know have been scarce and therefore expensive the last couple of years.
Side comment: I’ve never lived close to the Canadian border, so have no relevant experience. Are used vehicles moving between the US & Canada commonplace? is that a big deal or a red flag in and of itself? Is there anything about titling or registering them that represents pitfalls for the unwary? Or alternatively, is it somethng that common folk are afraid of that anyone in the know realizes is a non-issue?
As somebody smartly said upthread, anything any of us (including both me and the OP himself) can say at this point is merely statistical. Spend the $200 to get it inspected, and assuming it’s good, then steal that thing from the dealer eager to be rid of it for a song. And consider the money you just saved as a deposit into the repair account should you get a bad surprise early.
Unsurprisingly, I think you’ve gotten lots of excellent advice.
I have but two cents to add:
If this thing isn’t going anywhere anytime fast, then you could start with your own inspection (Checklist 4pg PDF) to hopefully uncover any showstoppers and maybe save the independent mechanic inspection fee.
But even if you find no showstoppers, I’d still take it to a good, reliable, meticulous mechanic and have them do whatever they can think of to shift the odds in your favor.
I don’t know your wants, your needs, your timing, your budget, or the options available to you that aren’t these two trucks, so it’s hard for me to weigh in with too many specifics.
Another reason it might have been sitting for so long is that it’s RWD. When I was last looking to buy a truck, I wanted a RWD truck, but discovered that 4x4s had almost completely taken over the market in the years since I’d last been looking to buy. There just doesn’t seem to be much desire for two wheel drive trucks any more.
It goes in cycles. A few years back, when the US-Candian exchange rate was particularly bad, lots of Canadian used cars crossed the border, because the exchange rate had a built-in profit for the US buyers. Buy a car for CAN$20,000, sell it for US$20,000, and bank the difference from the exchange rate. This needs a good enough difference to offset the shipping charges and what not, but when it’s high enough, dealers go out of their way to offer to buy your vehicle any time they see you. I had one guy offer to buy my truck less than 3 months after I had just bought it!
Personally I wouldn’t touch a vehicle with that many miles. In my younger days I drove nothing but high mileage and worn out vehicles. I got tired of working on them and the frequent break downs. I bought my current vehicle, a 2014 Silverado with only 22,000 miles. 3 years later and I’ve doubled that. My previous vehicle, a 2006 Honda Ridgeline, was bought with 33,000 miles. I traded it in on the Silverado with 155,000 miles and it still ran and drove like new but it didn’t meet my needs. I needed something to pull a travel trailer. When I was looking for a pickup 3 years ago, I looked at a lot of newer pickups. Most had a lot of miles and I was surprised how beat up some of them were. One dealer had a then year old 2019 Toyota Tundra with 144,000 miles on it and there wasn’t a straight panel on the body and they still wanted $40,000 for it. Just because of it’s age I just did the 100,000 mile service and had every fluid in the truck changed. The truck should be good now till it actually does hit 100,000 miles.
A NYC taxi driver does about 180 miles per day on average, according to a couple of sites I checked. To me, 300+ miles a day in Canada indicates a cross-country commute on a regular basis. I could be wrong, but I don’t know how you put on 300+ miles a day locally.
Yeah, this sort of explains why it was brought to the US from Canada as well. RWD trucks get very squirrely in slick/snowy conditions, and uh, they have like 6 months of winter in Canada. (I’m in Michigan, where we have 5 months of winter, 6 months of road construction (where they do a total of 5 weeks worth of work which needs to be redone in 3 years), and 1 week of actually nice Summer.
Honestly, the mileage doesn’t scare me as long as it has been well maintained. If it’s been regularly serviced, it will last a good long time. That was true of cars in the late 80s (I bought an 89 LeBaron GTC with 165k miles on it and drove it for years) and it’s doubly true now. The worst thing about buying older cars now is dealing with first-generation Infotainment systems that were integrated with all the car’s other functions so you can’t upgrade them. A 2020 Ford isn’t going to have that problem. And enjoy telling all the folks who call you offering to sell an extended warranty “How much is it for a car with 200k miles on it?”
Hauling stuff around is my guess. For example, car dealers buy and sell inventory in different ways like auctions and from other dealers so stuff needs to get moved around. Same with rental agencies, boat sales, mobile homes.
One of the best cars I ever bought has 160,000 miles on it. It was about 5 years old and the seller said his son used it to drive between home in San Francisco and Minnesota, and it had a lot of highway miles. That car ran very well for me for the several years I had it.
My current car is a diesel 2016 Grand Cherokee that I bought new and now it has 145,000. I consider it barely broken in and I plan to drive it to 500,000 miles or more.
My last car was a 1st-gen Honda CR-V that I bought new and put 230,000 miles on. It had a manual transmission and it was still on the original clutch, and that’s with many days of San Francisco hills driving. When I sold it, it was still a solid and reliable car.
High mileage vehicles aren’t an automatic disqualification. High mileage vehicles can still be very good value purchases.
So I took it to my mechanic, a guy I’ve been using for years, I trust him.
He said overall it looks like new. The front brakes were on the verge of needing to be replaced, and the license plate bulb was burned out. That’s it. Clean as a whistle and it looked like it had been regularly maintained, which the carfax had indicated with oil and filter changes every 4000-6000 miles.
I offered the guy $1800 under his asking, he countered with $800 under, so I asked if he would put on all new brakes and fix the bulb. Done deal. With my trade-in, I wrote a check for $1000 to cover tax, title, etc.
And a huge thank-you to everyone who replied and helped talk me through this! I haven’t bought many used vehicles in my life, so everyone’s input was greatly, greatly appreciated, and I do mean appreciated. Every opinion, both pro and con, was considered. There isn’t a bunch of complete strangers I trust and whose opinions I value more than you sexy jamokes!
It’s great to see things turn out well! Good job everyone.
Makes sense. Got me to thinking of an elder relative who is facing a situation where their car has only accumulated like under 15K miles (person only had it for weekends, otherwise used transit, and then of course lockdown took a year out of going anywhere) after 5 years. “The kids” are split in advice to him that he should be giving it what the book says is the 15K/1Y service or what the book says is the 5Y/75K service. (I split the diff like LSLGuy said and say 15K for regular wear parts, 5Y for coolant/hyd.fluids/tran.fluid etc. if unchanged in this time)