Hello all.

So here's the deal. I am looking at a piece of land in Carbon County, Wyoming to start small scale cattle and horse ranching (A family friend is willing to part with 5 Angus heifers and two bulls, all at three years old for $10,000. Their offspring took third and fourth place in market class at the county fair this year and they have good pedigree). But, for this endeavor, I will need a bit more truck than my little F-150.

Right now, I'm looking at an '03 F-550 flatbed. 7.3 PSD, standard tranny, 100k miles. The price is decent ($14k), but I am wondering what I'd be ballparking in registration and insurance. I realize there is a lot of differences out there, but if I had a decent pool of answers, I'd at least have a general idea.


Thanks in advance,

--TK

 

No input as far as registration fees.......
But good luck in your endeavor!! And don't let the wind blow you away!!

 

I'm assuming you have insurance on your F150, call them up. You can most likely get some kind of farm rate. Same for the DMV, call them, they're the ones that will give you the real costs not some "well here in Nebraska it's ....."

 

I did talk to the company that I have my little truck through. The guy basically said "I can't really give you anything definite without a VIN. But it could be anywhere between $200-$1200 a month." Not incredibly useful.

Registration wise, I can't find anywhere on the Carbon County Clerk's website about what I would expect to pay. Usually there is at least something to that effect. I was hoping there might possibly be someone from Carbon with a similar truck that could give me a general dollar amount. See, what I'm doing is building a budget on a spreadsheet to see what everything would cost, and how much profit I could reasonably expect. But, these two numbers are annoyingly missing.

--TK

 

Okay, a little bit of an update. I did a lot of internet digging and found that registration would likely be between $100-$200. There are some unaccountable factors, but that gives a rough estimate. Still no dice on the insurance.

--TK

 

Back in the oldendays, we used this thing called a phone and asked the people who made decisions to find our answers. You may want to give it a shot, most of the time it is more reliable than the Internet.

 

Well, in my day we have these things called "livestock," and "traveling," that sometimes only allow 5 minutes to do a little internet surfing while you wait for something to finish. Phone calls are not an option for an extended period sometimes.

For instance, this past week I've been an hour from home, out of phone service and with a dead cellphone and no way to charge it, working 18 hour days without lunch on over 100 head of assorted livestock to keep them from dying in the 100+ heat. When you're up before the government workers and in bed after the government phone handler is already on their fourth or fifth cocktail, phone calls just don't happen very conveniently.

I'm not trying to sound whiny, but as I type this the people in charge of registration in Wyoming have been out of the office for almost five hours. The people that handle insurance selling have all gone home about the same time. So the internet was the only ready source I had for information.
And for informational purposes, I typed my first post in about 40 second intervals over the course of an hour as I had time inside between doing things.

--TK

 

That's almost like playing craps in Vegas, you have no idea what number will come up. Strange that they need the VIN to give you that. One would think with an F550 class they would be able to give you a better estimate then that of what the ball park would be. 200 to 1200 is not anywhere near a ball park amount

 

I'll be honest, you don't need a F-550. The registrations fees will be higher because of the vehicle GVW and if you want to max out your weight limits. Insurance will reflect the same.

you could do most everything you will want to with a f250 or f350.

 

I'd thought of that. The reason I was asking about the f-550 was because I found the one in the original post. But, that was made moot this morning when I saw that it was sold.

So, now I'm looking for more trucks. So, let's change this up: how many people use f-350s for towing small numbers of cattle/horses in a 5000lb trailer. And those that do, 7.3, 6.0, 6.4, 6.7, or V10?

--TK

 

How far will you be towing? what type of trailer? number of cattle you think you would be moving?

I do a lot of farm tax returns and the most popular truck that guys get is a 3/4 ton. The cattle guys usually have a gooseneck trailer that hauls around 10 head. Engines in them range from gas to diesel but most are diesel. My office parking lot looks like a ford truck dealership during tax season.

 

Right now I'm looking at a 24' Logan Coach Stockman gooseneck ( Stockman ? Horse/Cattle Stock Trailer | Logan Coach Trailers ). I'd be towing 35 miles on a regular basis, with trips from Wyoming to California occasionally. Probably be towing 6-10 animals at a whack. Cattle and/or horses. Also using the trailer to move a small John Deere and other farm related things.

The other thing I'd be towing is a 30' bumper pull RV trailer. Truth be told, I'll be moving this one a lot more frequently, on the order of once a week.

--TK

 

My aunt & Uncle tow with a 6.2 gasser with their horse trailers all the time, there daughter rides in competitions.

They thought about going with a diesel for their towing needs but even with their fifth wheel travel trailer and my uncle towing his skid steer around they decided that the 2012 6.2 CC F350 XLT had enough pulling power to do with the weights of their respective trailers, that and they didnt want the extra maintenance cost of a diesel

For what you are stating you will be towing with and what not I think a 6.7 f350 would do what you'd like towing wise, I dont think you'd have an issue with it

 

Now that was funny about tax season