Last week I stumbled onto an auction site that had a '49 panel truck for sale.





The starting bid was around $2500 and during the week it hung around $3200, until just before the end of the auction when the selling price was $19000. Not a bad price for what looks like a very nice truck. There are a few questionable items but overall it looks like a really nice truck.

Saturday morning after the auction ended I showed it to my wife and I told her I like to have bid on it but knew we didn't have the money to bid on it. Then she told me I should have bid on it and told me she'd find a way to come up with the funds. So my question now is do you think she just gave me permission to buy a large dollar item the next time something pops up or do you think she's just playing with me and if I did buy something there'd be trouble?

The killer was the truck was only about three hours away, it seems nothing good for sale is ever near me.

I've been married for almost 40 years and come to the conclusion many years ago that it's better to just go ahead and buy and worry about what happens later, you know, "It's easier to beg for forgiveness than the ask for permission"

 

Your luck with women totally is the opposite of mine.... do something she doesn't like and you will never get forgiven.
"Better to ask permission cause you will never get forgiveness."

I would also hazard that your definition of expensive and her's are probably about $10k apart.

 

In the last almost 40 years I've dragged a lot of junk home, well I didn't think it was junk but she did. After about 10 years of marriage I gave up being worried about whether the wife would get made. If I had the money for it I bought it. The few times I bought an old truck or car and we didn't really have the money for it I was able to sell off parts to more than cover the cost of the initial purchase. After a while she gave up complaining after I didn't show any reaction of her doing it.

My wife is a German farm girl and she doesn't like to spend a penny on anything but she will spend a bundle on a high end item but fortunately for me that doesn't happen too often.

 

[QUOTE=bobj49f2;21480835

..... So my question now is do you think she just gave me permission to buy a large dollar item the next time something pops up or do you think she's just playing with me and if I did buy something there'd be trouble?......

[/QUOTE]

Oh hell no. That was not permission. That was the cat letting go of the half-dead mouse for a moment so it can crawl off and then get caught again and flung up into the air, much to the delight of the cat.

30 years of marriage experience talking here.

Was a nice panel truck though. Needed a black front bumper, hope the new owner does that.

 

Good comment ! , had me in stitches .

 

Of course you got permission after it was no longer available. But before, maybe not? LOL.

 

I know where you’re coming from, one day I came home with a motorcycle on my trailer. My wife of nearly twenty years was so mad she upped and left me. Just like that ! I couldn’t believe it . One owner Yamaha rd250dx with allspeed expansion pipes £200.00 .

 

Well, past history with my wife and hobby. About 15 years ago my wife, who is a school bus driver, took our two boys to a pool party for the bus drivers and their kids. While the kids were swimming the bus drivers, who were all women, had a hen session and one of the subjects brought up was "how do you keep your husband under control?" How do I know this, my wife came home and told me. Well, at the time I was looking at buying a panel truck project I found about three hours north of our house. The day after she told me about the discussion I called the panel truck seller and made arrangements to buy the truck. I went up the following weekend and bought the truck. My wife asked me why I didn't talk to her before buying the truck and I told her she gave me permission as soon as she told me about the hen party.

About ten years ago I went down to Peoria Illinois to help him and his friend pick up a Hudson and a bunch of Hudson parts. While touring the seller's massive collection of old cars we spotted a '37 Buick. My friend started pestering me to buy the Buick. I told him I had no interest in the Buick and even if I did I didn't have the money to buy it. He told me he had the money in his pocket. I told him if he had a divorce lawyer in his other pocket there was no way I was going to buy the Buick. I got home and was showing my wife the cars the seller had and a picture of the Buick popped up. My wife told me I should buy it. I told her she was BSing me and she said, "No, go back down and buy it." So what could I do? I bought it the next weekend.

 

Bob, that is not permission. If you can sell it or other "junk" you have then she might be OK after the fact. Before I bought that 55 F600 for the script bed, I had to have my ducks in a row. I had to tell my wife I was storing it at my buddy's GF farmette and that I'd sell the truck after I got the bed off. Oh, and she likes that I paid for it with mowing money.

I bought it for $1600 and sold it for $1200. She was pleased with that. I sold the tow hooks and a Chrysler Corp oil bath air cleaner I found in the cab and she was pleased with that.

Tom, I agree that stock looking panel truck needs black bumpers.

 

Abe, I would have sold my present panel if I had bought this panel. The only way I could afford to play with any of my projects is by buying and selling old trucks and cars. I don't think I ever lost money doing it. Most times I made a decent profit and had parts I needed for my projects.

I don't have a problem storing the stuff I buy. I have a barn and a couple of garages at my house and if I would buy something that needed more storage I'd haul it over to the farm and put it in the back 40. We own the farm now and my in-laws aren't a problem now.

The auction panel isn't perfect, there is a lot of cosmetic things I'd change including the color of the bumpers and the dash, the hubcaps would have to do also.

We lived on my wife's family farm for many years, my in-laws moved to a newer house down the road when I proposed to my wife. While living there if I brought home parts truck my in-laws would give my wife a hard time about me having a junk truck sitting in the driveway. We lived way off the main road, our nearest neighbor, another farm, was two blocks away so there was no one who could complain. I also only took up the space of a truck on a very wide and long driveway. My in-laws weren't fan of old trucks, they considered my F-2 a used vehicle and should be sold to buy a new one. One time they bought ten feeder steer, small calves they raised for a year and half and then sold as beef animals. They paid $100 a piece and after feeding them every day and taking care of them for over a year and a half they sold the ten for $5000. My M-I-L bragged to me about all the money they made on them. At about the same time I had a guy stop in my shop while I had the F-2 parked outside and offer to sell me some old truck parts. I bought all of the sheet metal for an F-1 and a few more parts, for $500 dollars and flipped everything within two weeks for over $1500. I asked my M-I-L if they had to take care of the cattle before they sold them and she said, every day. I told her I made $1000 in less than two weeks with very little work by selling "junk". .

 

Part 2: before I bought the 55 F350 in 2016 I showed my wife pictures of it. She liked it
She liked the color, Meadow Green but she said I
needed to sell the 70 F350 flatbed I had first. I found a buyer. The difference between selling the 70 and buying the 55 was $1000 plus another $1000 for tires.

 

""I don't think I ever lost money doing it. Most times I made a decent profit and had parts I needed for my projects.""
This is the secret.

 

Bob,
A few years ago on a Saturday morning the wife asked what I had planned for the day. I said that I was going to an truck auction. She asked what i was going to buy. I replied that I wasn't going to buy anything and was just looking. She said that we had the money and that I could buy something if I wanted.
Who the heck was this woman?!?!! She looked like my wife but my wife doesn't talk that way (not so much about the money, but more about dragging home more trucks).
I went off to the auction but I was so unsettled that I let tons of super great deals go by. Due to some organizational issues with the auctioneer the sale was chaos and things were going for super cheap. I didn't buy a thing. I passed up a really great 1925 Reo Speedwagon 1 ton with enclosed wooden cab....sold for $1800, a late 40's International 1 1/2 with a flat bed (running) $2700, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention pallets of parts, etc.
That evening I showed her some pics and she gave me grief for not buying anything.

To this day I wonder if it wasn't some super sneaky woman's reverse psychology to mess with my mind. It's been 4 or 5 years and I'm still flustered about it.
Them gals are sneaky!!

Bobby

 

Another related subject to all this is my wife's ability to smell any money I make on selling parts. Never seems when I sell something for $200 she'll find a bill for $250 and is short the exact amount I just got. It's amazing. I've learned to keep my sales private and not tell her but somehow she always must smell the money. I recently sold some truck parts for a pretty amount, I was able to keep most of it by buying parts and supplies but at the end I had $300 left and amazingly she came up with a $300 expense she needed money for. I didn't tell her the amount but somehow she knew. I just sold $400 in parts and I'm waiting for her to ask if I happen to have $400 to pay a bill.

 

I bought my 55 f350 from a local auction. I was hesitant to tell the wife that I was bidding. Once she found out I was bidding and found out my self imposed limit, she pushed me to bid a little higher.
She may love old crusty trucks as much as I do.