Three Tips For Choosing The Right Used Truck

Buying a used vehicle can be a trying experience, and searching for pre-owned trucks for sale can have its own set of pitfalls that needs to be carefully avoided. Whether you are looking to purchase a truck for your own personal use or as a business vehicle, you should keep the following tips in mind both as you start your search and as you begin to visit dealerships in person.

Get a Feel for the Local Market

While this is generally good advice for any used vehicle purchase, it is especially important to feel out the local market when looking for a used truck. Check out both online and print classifieds to determine the average price of the specific models that you are looking for. While plenty of websites can provide you with book values, the reality of local markets is often more complex. With trucks in particular, certain areas may have a larger portion of ex-work trucks on the private market. Depending on the businesses that are offloading these vehicles and their conditions, this may have the effect of depressing local prices.

Carefully Consider Your Needs

Trucks tend to come with many, many more options than most cars. Do you need 4WD? Are you in the market for a single, extended, super, or quad cab? What size bed? With cars, it is often true that your specific needs will guide you to a relatively small number of models, but with trucks a single model optioned out differently may fulfill many different use cases. This is less an issue when buying new, but when buying used it may be difficult to find a truck with the exact options you want.

For this reason, it is important to clearly understand the features that you absolutely need and the features that would simply be nice to have. If you wait for the perfect truck, you may find that many great deals will pass you by.

Don't Buy Blind

Once you've found a truck that looks good, it's time to really get down and dirty with it. Above all else, try to find out as much about the truck's history as possible. Even if you are buying a pick-up for personal use, it is possible that the used vehicle you are looking at was previously a work truck or that its previous owner abused it significantly. If you are buying through a dealership that does not have a detailed history, make sure to request a vehicle history report so that you can at least discover any major red flags.

Once you are confident that you aren't buying a truck with any deal breakers in its history, it's time to schedule a pre-purchase inspection. This is a step that many prospective buyers ignore, but it is extremely important. For about a hundred dollars, you can have a trained mechanic give the truck a solid inspection to discover any major mechanical or cosmetic issues that you may be unaware of. This will not only give you confidence in your purchase, it may provide you with negotiating fodder as well.