How NOT to BUY a USED truck!

And always take a look up at the bottom of your box. I mean, you're going to have a little bit. Nothing's perfect. These aren't show trucks. You have to replace it. It's not a serviceable filter. And it's the engine blowby. Do before I run it as I smell it. But more importantly, it's [Music] [Applause] [Music] magnetic. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, one and all. Alex and Tim and I are going to walk you through exactly what we look for before we buy a used truck. And we've all bought plenty of used trucks separately and we're going to just go through point by point what each one of us looks for because we all look for something a little bit different when we're in the middle of buying one of these. And this is going to be a three-part series. So today we're going to be talking about used trucks and the next video we're going to be talking about used skid loaders and then in another video used mini excavators. And the reason we're doing this is because over at the dirt monkeyshop.com we have worked with a company called Yes Leasing and they have a bunch of repole heavy equipment and trucks. And Yes company that I was talking to Tony from Yes Leasing. He's like the head guy of Yes Leasing. And yesterday Tony told me that if a guy has a pulse and a good story, he can get them financing, right? I'm not jo I'm not joking. This is what Tony said. Now, you're not going to It's not going to be the cheapest financing, but they're Yes. Leasing will finance just about anybody. Give them They will give them a chance. So, if you're They've even got trucks on now. We've got trucks on our website on dirtmonkeyshop.com. Skid loaders, heavy equipment, all sorts of equipment. But we're going to walk you through today exactly what we look for. So, let's dive right into [Music] it. Now, a truck pre-trip inspection starts before you even show up, right? Right. Okay. What do you say? How does that start? A lot of times when I call and ask about a truck, you know, I ask if it's available and I let them know I'm interested to come look at it. And I specifically tell them not to start it and warm it up because usually they could be hiding something uh like a manifold leak on a gasser. When the truck is warm, you can't even hear it, but when it's cold, it's ticking like no other. And it's just good to hear how they start cold. Sometimes they clank around when they're cold. I would avoid buying that. Right. And there's a couple kinds of trucks that right out of the gate, I asked those even before I come out questions that are an automatic no for me. One of them is if it I was taught this by an oldtime mechanic when I was first buying dump trucks. He taught me this and I I held it over into uh pickup trucks. He said never buy a snowplow truck. Yep. And he said, "The reason why, and I learned it's true, is that the that salt gets into the undercarriage, it gets into the suspension system, it gets into the transmission lines, especially if they're a hard line. And what it'll do is it'll slowly rot everything out. And you're just buying somebody else's ticking time bomb." Yep. At that point, you said there was a truck you would never buy either. I probably wouldn't buy a tuned and deleted truck that's been hopped up and uh you know got a bunch of performance stuff done to it just because you never know if the guy was beating the crap out of it or just using it for extra work and it's just had a hard life with an extra 100 horsepower on top of it. Yeah. So now that's a we're talking about the difference between somebody's show truck that they're super proud of and a truck like this one that maybe somebody has gone in tuned up given the extra horsepower to and the thing when they what you're saying is when someone gives them that extra horsepower they want to use it. It's hard not to. It's hard not to. And that's not easy on these trucks. There's no sense in buying somebody else's problem. Of course, a lot goes to the person selling the truck. If they're the original owner and the dude's 70 years old and he babyed that truck for 20 years, just go buy it, right? And he took care of it and he tuned it to do preventative maintenance on it. He's got a small tune on it and you can tell he's not beating the crap out of it. You know, that's a different story. But you come up and there's black smoke near the tailpipe there and you know, you can tell someone's been romping around town on it. Yeah. Especially if they start bragging about how many times they rotated the tires. I'm just like, "Yeah, just just sell me the truck. I'll listen to your story, oldtimer." But let's start with the tires because tires tell a lot of story. In a moment, we're going to cover some of those tips that the old-timers taught me way back in the day that still hold true today. But there, I'm jumping in here because there's something I forgot to mention in this entire video, and it was the what I consider to be the most important point of anything. I was doing a podcast a couple years back and one of the guys I interviewed happened to be one of the most impactful podcast interviews ever and it was about the proper way to buy and sell equipment. And long story short without listening to the hourlong podcast, what he summed up was it doesn't make a difference how you buy the piece of equipment. It's how you sell it that matters the most. because what you want to do is you want to buy that piece of equipment as close as possible to the price that you can sell it for so that that piece of equipment can basically be free. And he said the key to making that happen is to buy it as stock as possible, but to look at the resale value of that truck truck or piece of equipment as a stock item. He said, "If you put a lot of customization onto these trucks, that's not for everybody. The average guy out there is going to want something that he feels has got replaceable parts that's going to bring the absolute closest value to the point where you can sell it." And I realized how impactful this was when I was selling a backhoe that I had used for almost 15 years. I was able to sell that backhoe for about the same price that I had bought it a decade and a half earlier. Meaning that other than the cost of ownership during the time, the machine itself was absolutely free. So, anytime you're looking at a piece of equipment or a vehicle, look at the resale value. Unless you plan on driving it into the dirt, what you're going to get out of it when you're finally through and that difference in price of your purchase price to what you can sell it for is the actual cost of ownership just to have it in your name. And go over to the Dirt Monkey shop and check out our repo section cuz we got a lot of cool stuff over there. But let's dive back into this video. So yeah, and we got two sets of tires here. Let's go to the back. Well, there's they're already telling the story of what's going on with these trucks. Yeah, I bought these tires aftermarket and you can tell that someone had it on the front of their truck. So, it's they're choppy. You know, you can feel it, which says usually there was a front end issue on there. So, when you look, you can see the difference in height in those tires. So, whatever truck that was on, it had something in the front end that was loose and wobbly. Whereas, these tires are going to be nice and smooth. The tire is flat. It's wearing evenly. That tells me that the front end is nice and tight and it's not sloppy and worn. All right. So, the the tail of the tires is one thing. It's not just if they're wore down, it's how they're wore down. Exactly. That's a big thing is not don't just look at the tread life on them, but look at the tread wear because that's going to tell you what's going on underneath, especially in the front end. Yeah. Now, one of the tricks now, so this I I say we should also include some of the bigger rigs in this thing. One of the things to look for that I was taught because I I just went to a mechanic shop and I was young and young and dumb and didn't know any better and I says, "What is everything I got to look for?" And they always told me to pull the plug on the pumpkin. Always said. Now, I don't know if you can pull the plug on every pumpkin on a pickup truck, but on a big rig like this, there is a plug. Is it in the front or the back, do you think? I can't remember on probably in the front. Right here. Okay. So, right here is the plug and there may be another one on the front. Okay. If you pull that plug, it should not be to the point you should have oil. You should have oil just up to the rim because that's where it's supposed to be. But more importantly, it's magnetic. And if you pull that and you see metal shavings, you need a new rear end. Or could you need a new rear end? And if you see chunks, just forget it. Yeah. Don't even think about it. The truck is the truck will need a new rear end. Now, that's different cuz the magnetic plug on a pickup truck like this is on the bottom. So, you're not going to probably be able to do that. We've got the hoods up. Alex, what do we look for under the hood? Do you want to start with a body or under the hood first right away? What do you want to start with? We can start with under the hood. Under the hood. Okay. Yeah. So, usually, you know, I'll get up in here and I'll inspect it to see how dirty it is. I'll check the air filter. I'll pull the air filter out. Um, see how bad that is to see if somebody's been taking good care of it. Check the dates on the battery. See how new those are. Cuz for a big truck like this, it's like 700 bucks for some batteries. So, if you can get that taken care of before, I would have. Then, I always, you know, you check the training fluid when it's running and hot, you know, on a level surface. But what I always do before I run it is I smell it because you can always smell if it has like a burnt scent to it. Look at the color of it. Is it brown or is it red? This one hasn't been changed for about 40,000 miles. This is a solid transmission. You can see it's nice and red. It doesn't have a burnt smell to it. And then I do the same with the oil. Before I even run it, I check the oil level to make sure that it's at proper height. You know, that's perfect right there at the top of the line. This truck is a little older. It does have a little dirtier of oil. I smell that, too, to make sure that it smells good and doesn't smell burnt out. Okay. Like somebody's been running it hot. Yep. You know, what about the radiator? Do you look at the radiator fluid at all? Yeah, you can. And you can check for milkiness on like the top of the cap and stuff. You can check for milkiness up there. So, you're looking when you say milkiness, you're looking for a froth right underneath the cap. Yep. And then I also check on the oil cap right there as well too to see if there's any frothiness on there, which sometimes in Minnesota you get a little condensation up there from the hot and cold. So, you get a little bit of it, but a little bit isn't bad. You can also check right here too for the radiator fluid for, you know, antifreeze to see if there's any milkiness going on in there. Are you uh ever going to pull the oil uh the t the cap for the oil and run the engine? Yep. So that's what I would do when it's cold. And on big rigs, this is a mandatory step. On a truck like that, it's the engine blowby. So what you want to do is you want to pull that cap. Let's show them what we're like to do it. Yep. I'll start the truck and then I pull the cap. And what you do is you take the cap on and we're not on level ground. So, and you usually see the cap bouncing around, you know, or you'll see actual smoke coming out of there. Come past it. Like this one does have a little bit of it because it had the PCV valve on there for a long time and I was plugged up and it ruined it, you know, and that's some of the stuff that they put on these trucks that ruin it. And they never had anything in the service record for replace this filter at x amount of miles and it's you have to replace it. It's not a serviceable filter. And it got plugged up with oil and it wasn't letting pressure out of the system and it created blowby in this engine and now it's totally gone and out of there. Got rid of it. The blowby? No, the the crankcase ventilation. The crankcase ventil. Okay. Yeah. This truck also has 150,000 miles on it, so it's it's getting up there in age. Okay. Um, we've got the hood open. Is there anything else in the engine compartment that you look for besides listening to it? No. Uh, other than just checking the air filter. So, let's So, let's go on to the body. Yep. Now, I start when I start with mine, I always start with the hood open and I look right here. right in here. And I look all around for overspray. If I see any overspray on the truck, whether that's in the frame, it's a different color, uh, or anything like that, that's where that's a big red flag. This truck was in an accident. Hey, Tim. Hi. So, what do you look for on the body? I go through it with a fine tooth comb, and Tim can definitely attest for me. I went through both of our trucks like this and then I had them put it on the lift and we went through the bottoms of them. Okay. Checked everything through there. You can always check the body lines, you know, if the body lines are even and or So, this is an this is an important point. What he's talking about is right here. Yes. And like over here, they should always be smooth and symmetrical. You know, you shouldn't have any odd gaps. I mean, you're going to have a little bit. Nothing's perfect. These aren't show trucks, but you know, you're definitely going to want to look to see if something is crunched up in there and uh is an issue. And then when I'm under there, I'm crawling around. I'm looking for rust and any kind of damage. Is there anything hanging? Did they clip anything down there? Have they been rubbing a bunch of crap with it? And always take a look up at the bottom of your box cuz I've seen where these right here are just rotted. This is a great example. Rotted gone. And this truck right here, you can tell whoever had this truck never took the sprayer and washed it up in there. Well, now you might not be able to see it, but up on that boxite over there, it's super rusty up there. So pretty sprayed like look like a brand new truck. And then you look under there and you can see that they sprayed all the rust. That box you could probably you're not going to be able to set much in it. It's just going to it's going to crush it down. It's just going to it's it's just hanging on to the paint. hanging on, but they they polish it up so nice. And then, you know, there's also a difference of surface rust and like structural rust because a little bit of surface rust you can save it. Sometimes the elbow grease if you're buying a used truck. You just saved this one. You guys went through this one. Yeah, the rockers right here. You can see we totally grinded down all the rockers and all the rust on there. If you would have seen it before, it somebody would have been like, "That's a rusty piece of crap." Well, it happens. These are salt trucks, but we can maintain them and make them look way better. Yeah. Look at that. That looks really good. Yes. Frame and everything. It turned out nice. We have to do the wheel wells in white though. Uh, one thing on the bigger trucks to check for if it was like used used hard road wet and uh put road hard and put away wet, you're going to see it in the rear leaf springs. you find that these leaf springs will have rust and eventually those will fail. That was taught to me by an oldtime mechanic. But now we've covered the tires. Tim, you were you showed up a little bit after the fact. Covered the tires in the engine compartment. Is there anything you'd look for specifically in the engine compartment? Leaks. But the first thing I do before even starting up the truck is check that oil. See what the oil looks like. How thick, if it's sy? If it's got a leaves a big residue on your fingers, it hasn't been changed in a while or there's blowby or something that's causing the, you know, poor properly improper like fuel combustion or whatever that's getting into your oil. And one of the things that I like to do too is I like to put the truck on a clean piece of concrete and just let it run. Yeah, that's another good point. Just let it run. It's best if you can show up if they didn't start it before. Oh, we said that. Always start it before we get too far back. Alex, explain to me exactly what engine blowby means. Just means that the rings and pistons are worn and air is getting past your system and blowing by a little bit of pressure is what I was under the impression it is. I might not be It's a worn out engine. Yeah, worn out. Your engine is getting weak. And you look and you see if the, you know, that's another thing before you start it up. Check and see if there's residue on the oil cap. I mean, I suppose you guys talked about that or No. Yes, we did. And you could also go so far as to check the compression of each individual cylinder if you really wanted. You can bring it to a shop sometimes if you have a friend that owns a shop, drive it over there and have them have a mechanic go through it if you're not mechanically inclined. Pay the 125 bucks if you know it's a good truck. And yeah, have them do an inspection on it real quick to make sure there's nothing major. That's if you're really interested in it, it's worth the money. Yep. All right, guys. Uh, another thing too before we dive back into the rest of this video, make sure that you hit that subscribe button because we're going to be comparing skid loaders, how to buy them, and Minia X's as well. I said it in the beginning, but I'm going to say it again right here. And check your fluids, too. Like if your power steering pump's low, if your if your brake fluid's low, you know, like grease, if you got Do you ever check to see if your blinkers are half full of water? Oh, first thing, check the Oh, yeah. Like mine right here. Mine's gotine water. No, I don't. I thought I thought you were gonna I thought you were getting That is an actual Oh, look at look at my I broke my tail light. Yeah, but on Tim's new truck, we found water in the actual tail light halfway into like blinker fluid or something. But for real, I I would have never imagined to see water in my tail light. And that was something I wasn't even looking for. Like I said, I got through and looked at these trucks like this and never never seen that. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's right there. I mean, this is the water, but that actually could also look like it's how it's supposed to look. Look like it's how it's supposed to look. There's a line right there. So many lines in these things, right? Yep. And then you then you do that. You start it up, lay it, take it for a test drive. That's how you cuz you can't really check the front end out too good on that. Uh but you can when you sit in there and you you kind of give it this if there's clunking, if there's something going, you know, you could have tie rod ends, ball joints, front end. I mean, these trucks, especially if they were a plow truck, check out them front ends, cuz that's never buy a plow truck. That's one of the things I said earlier is you never buy a plow truck. And Alex said you never buy a tuned truck. Is there any truck you would never instantly buy? Um, not right off the top of my head, but a salt truck. But you can see if someone maintains that stuff and they took good care of it, you know, salt truck, if they've sprayed it off when they're done using it, there's a chance that it's, you know, it depends on who owns it. What about inside of the cab? Is there anything you specifically you look for or don't you? Isn't that as as critical? Well, I'm thinking about options. Like I was looking specifically…