Had to restart the weight training loading the old Golden - Roofy T into the cab. The stairs are cool. Thank god I had the Newfie when I was younger…

All my vehicles are old, with the exception of the better half’s 2023 Mazda, newest is a 2010. Last new truck I bought was an 06 Ram 2500.

I’m blessed to work for a great company and they cover my truck cost. Three in 25 years, latest is the 23 250. Other than a sloppy rear end set at the factory, the rattles with cheap plastics it’s been good. Doesn’t use a drip of oil and my main concern, the transmission has been solid.

When you start looking hard, a new ram with a diesel could be had at the entry tradesmen level for <60 and give you the 100k warranty.

All my older cars, three in total - both kids and mine are Accords with the 2.4. Mine is a stick, so it’s kind of fun. And they don’t cost me much, thinking under 1k in repairs for all three in 10 years. Certainly cheaper than the wife’s Mazda.

It kind of boils down to if you can wrench and troubleshoot, older vehicles save massive coin. If you can’t wrench you can always buy new. Have a few mates who run older vehicles and the maintenance does add up when a brake job is 1.4k.

Nothing wrong with going new or a smidge of vanity. Being old and married for 33 years has its benefits, one being vanity left a long time ago.

 

Once you lose the feeling of reliability it's time for a newer vehicle especially if you travel away from home.

 

absolutely. The truck is three things to me. It tows my boat to and from the ramp, hauls lumber/sheet rock/landscaping materials/etc. from the yard back to where my wife wants me to make an improvement, and third, it's our long haul driver for family "vacations" (ie, seeing other family...which is not a vacation). Most of the mileage on that thing is from 2500-3000 mile road trips where we go out to see family and then use that to go between family members. It has to be rock solid reliable. If all you use it for are drives that are 10-30 miles away, I can see being a little less aggressive on the preventative maintenance or putting off minor repairs, but since I have had the following issues - Radiator leak at my sister-in-laws house 900 miles from home, busted power steering line at the marina 2 weeks before a long trip and the repair of which resulted in a bad seal introducing air into the braking/steering system (same system for PS is also used for the braking system, so both go down at the same time), busted brake line (I've replaced all of these lines with new runs from booster all the way to final destination including hoses)...it's time for a new one. I also live in an area where I am less than a mile from a major salt water marsh, and and I have major bodies of salt water on all sides of me, the nearest being 1 mile and the furthest being 10...so we get a lot of salt rains, plus all the salt the state puts on the roads in winter... yeah, 16 years is enough time for it to become someone else's problem...