QuestForAMillion.net

It has been my policy the past few years to buy late model used cars. Financial advisers, personal finance bloggers, and anyone with decent money sense will tell you that late model used cars are the most cost-effective way to obtain a vehicle. And I’ve found this advice to be spot on - purchasing a decent used vehicle 2-3 years old saves you a lot of money while still getting a solid ride.

But recently our vehicle situation changed. I regularly need a pickup truck for various things, mostly home improvement projects. I’ve always borrowed my dad’s truck since my parents live about 20 minutes away and being retired have ample time to help me do things. But age and mileage have finally caught up to that truck and now it needs some pretty hefty repairs. Since my parents really don’t need two cars, nor do they really need a truck, they’ve elected to just sell it. I think this is a very smart financial move for them but it puts me in wee bit of a pickle.

I can always rent a truck from the local Home Depot if I need to bring something big home. And if we purchase furniture or something of the like we can always have it delivered. My in-laws have a GMC Yukon, which has good cargo carrying capacity, though it is limited by the roof. Frankly, after years of borrowing the type of vehicle I need when I need it, I want my own. Granted, most of the time a pickup truck would be an air hauler, but there are definite times when it will get good use.

In doing research for fuel efficient vehicles I ran across a lot of information on E85. E85 (when made from corn) doesn’t contain as much energy as gasoline, consequently fuel mileage is lower in most vehicles when running on E85. E85 does, however, have a much higher octane content than gasoline, even premium grade gasoline. This contributes to a small horsepower increase when using the fuel. Another benefit of E85 is that it burns much cleaner than gasoline. While CO2 is still released when burning E85, this goes back into the atmosphere to be used by new corn plants. Hydrocarbon emissions are much lower than gasoline and E85 contains way fewer toxins and carcinogens than gasoline. However, in my mind the biggest benefit to E85 is that it’s renewable and it lessens our country’s dependence on foreign oil. After all, my biggest push for greater fuel efficiency was to be cleaner and use less foreign oil. E85 helps to accomplish that goal. I mention all of this because it relates to my research on pickup trucks.

Once I decided that a truck would be the right vehicle for me, I had to figure out which one. Trucks get notoriously poor fuel mileage, but they’re among the few vehicles on the road that can run on E85. So my first criteria in a truck is a FlexFuel model. FlexFuel is an industry standard, used by all the major auto manufacturers. A FlexFuel vehicle can run on any combination of gasoline and E85. The driver doesn’t need to do anything other than fill up the tank with whichever fuel he chooses. The Big 3 American manufacturers have all come out with FlexFuel trucks in the past couple of years.  Toyota won’t offer FlexFuel trucks until 2009 and Nissan only offers FlexFuel in certain regions of the country. Thus my search was narrowed down to the Big 3. And in a sign from above, a gas station very close to me and on my way to work recently added E85 pumps.

I didn’t mind knocking out Nissan and Toyota because I wanted an American truck anyway. Despite all the problems American automakers have, they know how to build trucks and have been doing it longer than anyone else. Another big criteria for me is safety. While I’m a pretty safe driver and haven’t been in an accident for years (knock on wood), you never know what’s going to happen. Trucks are tall vehicles and are prone to rolling over. With the advent of SUVs and the proliferation of trucks on American roads came possible the single greatest safety feature of all, vehicle stability control. Vehicle Stability Control (VSC) uses the onboard computer to change engine speed and apply selective braking to prevent a top-heavy vehicle from rolling over, or even getting out of control in the first place. The computer can do this much faster than a human. Studies have shown that VSC has had a dramatic impact on lowering crash rates. This should be a standard feature on every vehicle in my opinion. So my second criteria is a truck with VSC. This narrows down my search even further. Up through model year 2008, neither Ford nor Dodge offer VSC, even as an option. GM on the other hand includes VSC standard in all crew cab trucks and it is an option on all extended cab trucks since the 2007 model year.

So I’m narrowed down to a GMC or Chevy truck, 2007 or newer. I was a bit disappointed in that I wanted to get a 2-3 year old truck, but my criteria held me to a one year old truck at most. It is a bonus that GM trucks have the best fuel economy of any full-size pickup. I began to explore the GM trucks more seriously. The first thing I found was that I like the looks of the GMC better, although the two are very similar. I concentrated my search on GMC. I found out pretty quickly that there aren’t a lot of used GMC trucks out there. This is one of the lowest selling full-size trucks on the market apparently. Given the incentives being offered on new vehicles, I took a look at new trucks. GMC packages a lot of options together, rather than giving consumers more ala-carte options. To get a truck with the things I wanted I was quickly up over $40,000. Sorry but that’s way too much for me to spend on a vehicle. So I looked at Chevy. There are a lot more used Chevys on the market. After all, this is the second best selling truck in America, behind the Ford F-150. However, I was having a hard time finding a used truck with everything I wanted.

And then I struck gold. GM announced employee pricing on nearly their entire line of vehicles. Not only that, Chevy Silverado trucks continued to have $5000 cash incentives. I looked around dealer inventories and found a truck that had everything I was looking for. After the employee pricing and cash back, the price of the truck was about $27,000. It turns out this is only about $1500 more than a comparable used truck. So I had found the vehicle I wanted at a very attractive price.

My biggest hurdle with buying anything is that we don’t have car payments. I like it that way. A lot. No matter what I did, if I bought a truck I would have payments again. It took me some time to get comfortable with this idea. Since we just recently paid off both our vehicles we hadn’t had time to save for a new one yet. I didn’t have plans to buy anything anytime soon either. But life kicked in, circumstances changed, and timing probably couldn’t have been better. I looked around for several weeks, not finding anything to my liking when GM came out with employee pricing. Once I wrapped my head around the idea of car payments again, I decided this was too good a deal to pass up. Besides, I may be able to pay the truck off in the next year, but more on that to come later.

To summarize:

• Due to changing circumstances I decided a truck was the best vehicle for me
• I made sure I could get one that would meet my environmental goals
• I looked around and actually found the best deal on a new truck

Trent over at The Simple Dollar discusses buying new vs. buying used. He concludes that sometimes, new really is the best choice. In my situation it certainly turned out to be, but only because of heavy incentives on a vehicle that not many people want these days. Sometimes it pays to go against the crowd.