It's a no brainer that new trucks under warranty where you just squirt some grease in them & maybe put a tire or 2 on them once in a while is way more efficient than an old truck that you're spending every Saturday and sometimes a night or 2 during the week working on. My log truck payments are 4000 bucks a piece and and they get washed fueled greased and go. When they hit 5 years old I will trade them in. All of this crap about new trucks breaking down all the time is an old wivestale. If that is the case those guys were probably still washing their clothes on a buckboard.
I don't know about you guys but there's no way you can have an old truck that you're making a $1000 month payment on and have it come out cheaper to operate per month than a brand new one where the payment is $4000.
In many cases yes, but I raise you my dads 2015 international. In 90,000 miles it's needed a EGR and turbo (warranty), and the second time another EGR and head rebuild (not warranty $21000 bill), a few months in the shop for those, 3 tows (had to pay for 2 of them) and numerous non start issues due to dealer not finding broken part on starter that would only engage sometimes, and many many other issues and many times the dealer charging a few hours labor here and there saying something stupid isn't warranty.
Bought a brand new truck and sold the 89 to get something "more reliable" and honestly it wasn't it did see more miles then the old one, but in 6 years the 89 never needed a tow and only really broke down once when the starter went, the 2015 broke down about 5 times and was towed 3 times. Instead of problems you could fix yourself it was sitting at the dealer who wasn't capable of putting washer fluid in, never mind fixing it and it came with a nice payment of over $4000 and way higher insurance compared to a truck that cost $15000 and paid for itself the first summer. Oh and it burns WAY more fuel then the old truck, like a disturbing amount. While it is the odd truck out and everyone knows the maxxforce is absolute garbage, there is plenty of newer trucks out there far less reliable then the old ones.
For a O/O in the truck everyday it has to be reliable and over a certain age doesn't make sense unless you have a good setup for someone to wrench on it, but I wonder for a fleet, would it be cheaper and better to own an extra truck per every say 10 as a spare and run older and have a mechanic who does the repairs, assuming the company only ran local, if you're going across north america that's not going to work.
Well I wouldn't agree looking at it month by month makes the most sense. You got to compare over a number of years total what the difference in cost is, if the new truck has a 8 year loan drawn out compared to a old one that's only 3, the older one is going to be more expensive to start but get cheaper by the end when the payment is gone. But obviously there is a age tipping point where it makes more sense to get rid of the truck and it's better suited to a owner who only runs it a few days a week.