From: Employee@MilVeh.com
Date: Sat May 17 2003 - 09:25:13 PDT
If I had to do it all over again I think I would skip
the auction. I would rather buy from a professional
who knows trucks, like we have on our list. You know
guys like Gene and Joe. These are standup people who
you can trust. The small profit they make is well
worth the peace of mind you get buying and knowing
what you got. You also don't have to wait 6 mos for
your EUC and wonder if your truck is getting stripped
or damaged.
Now as to the bidding strategy if you are determined
to bid, here's what has happened to me. I would bid a
max of about $1675 on a deuce if it's within 1000
miles or less to my home.
Unless you can be guaranteed you can drive home, it's
going to cost at least $1+ per mile to transport and
by the time it gets here and I pay DMV I figured I
should have less than $3000 in it to make it work for
me in case I have to resell it. You can buy some nice
deuces retail for $3500-$4000 and avoid all the
auction risk and hassles. You are going to spend
$300-600 on average to add/repair stuff too. Always
happens, so figure that in.
Bottom line, you got to buy it right or forget it. I
think its too much risk vs reward if you have to pay
mor than $1900 for a deuce at auction. Thanks to that
logic, I have been [outbid] on at least 15 deuces and
I finally got one! Took 2 years of screwing around!
A few times I was outbid by $10 or $20 bucks by
somebody at the very end...thats frustrating. But, in
California if the truck looks decent you can get out-
bid by thousands. People here seem bid them up way
too high. I recall a couple of 5 ton cargo trucks
that were good to just ok, bidding went around $11k
and the other went for 15k! IMHO that is [nuts] when
you really don't know what you are getting... I mean
you don't even get a test drive, right? lol
The one truck I finally did get was from Barstow. GL
had zero info. on it other than pic. and they had a
lot of other trucks to sell. No year, no mileage,
nothing...just a pic. I took a big chance and bid on
it via proxy. Proxy ran out in the last 10 minutes.
GL picked up on the activity and extended the close
time! That really pissed me off. Anyway, I had to
bump another bidder at the end about 3 times and I
finally got it after paying more than I wanted.
Wasn't sure I even wanted it at that point, but after
being outbid so many times before this was it for me.
I lucked out on the truck. Truck was overall pretty
good shape, save for some lousy tack welds on the
fender, some fork lift damage by GL and some rust
welds around hood hinges... working on all that now,
plus a very tiny air leak somewhere in the fuel
system.
Good luck, but like I said if I had to do it over
again I would get a truck through one of our list
people. They're real good folks to deal with and as
fair as you will ever see anywhere. Price is well
worth knowing what you get, not to mention the time
you save! Remember it took me 2 years of bidding to
finally get one!
Jack (Chico-CA)
--- "Fred H. Schlesinger" <fred@schlesingers.net>
wrote:
> No, Tom, I wasn't kidding. I have a much more
> obvious sense of humor than that.
> I'm sure that at any particular time, most of the
> list members are not in the
> market for a truck. (mv content)
>
> And, for those who do want to acquire a truck at the
> same time, there are
> hundreds for sale each quarter, so the chances that
> one list member would be
> bidding against another is small.
> So, by sharing how they are successful, they could
> help a novice like me from
> making an ass out of myself by driving the price up
> early, or making some other
> mistake that I haven't even thought of, should I
> decide to deal with GL.
>
> Or did you mean that the question was silly or self
> evident?
>
> Fred
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tom bauer" <milveh@carr.org>
> To: "Fred H. Schlesinger" <fred@schlesingers.net>
> Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 7:45 PM
> Subject: Re: [MV] Gl BIDDING STRATEGY
>
>
> | you're kidding, right??
> | tom
> |
> |
> |
>
>
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