Trade in value you won't believe

[Gospel Provider]

I have 05 DC 4x4 with sunroof NAVI, Bluetooth, Factory wood grain everything. It does have a lot of miles (58K), but it is very clean. Even the sales guy remarked there was not a scratch on it. I put about 20K a year on and thought about going green with a Honda Civic. I know NADA is high, but they quoted trade-in value at $19200. Honda offered my $10K!!!!!!!! I don't care if gas is $10 a gallon, I'm keeping this truck and just grit my teeth at the pump! I might even drive over the next Civic I see. LETS START DRILLING!!!!!!!

[Jetes03tundra]

thats ridiculous.

[dosequis driver]

No, that's reality... and it bites.

I've got an '06 SR5 Double Cab with 20,000 miles with a rather extensive list of after market upgrades and accessories.... all in pristine condition: $13,000 from CarMax about two weeks ago. I bet if I went back today the offer would be even lower. Reminds me of that Microsoft stock I bought at $112/share back just before the market crashed.

Anyway, I feel your pain. I'll keep my listed for sale "just because" but I have little if any realistic expectation that anyone will buy it for what I 'feel' I need to get out of it. Of course, in about another month or so NADA, edmunds, KBB, and VMI used truck values will have finally caught up with the market and then all hope will be lost.

My original plan was to sell the Tundra for about $20k and buy into a used Honda Odyssey for about $27k. I figured payback was about 6 years @ $4.50 gallon. It was half of that for a Honda Civic Hybrid, but it's kind of hard to haul a lot of people and stuff around in a Honda Civic Hybrid. With the truck & SUV resale value crash, payback is so far out of sight it's not funny. Moreover, I still don't believe they've figured out what the true 'future fuel' will be so buying into a hybrid today may be short sighted vs. a hydrogen / fuel cell vehicle in 5 years... remembering that dumping the truck and buying a replacement is a 12 year payback proposition even at $5/gallon.

Bottom Line: Owning a used truck or SUV is even worse than devalued stock: at least the stock might rebound. Truck and SUV values will simply not bounce... supply is just too vast and demand too low.

[JBK23]

Why don't you get a honda redgilne and still have a truck with V6 power and good mpg that should beat a honda civic any day !

[Gospel Provider]

I really think Honda makes great vehicles except the Ridgeline. It is basically a front wheel drive mini-van/truck. I do not think that the Honda @ 15/20 MPG versus the Toyota @ 14/17 MPG is getting good mileage. If I am going to drive a truck I will stick with a real truck.

[DH]

You guys kill me with all the whining over gas prices. No way in hell I'd lose $10,000 to $20,000 just to save a few hundred dollars in MPG.

I'm not old enough to remember the 70's gas shortage but I'll bet everyone thought the world was coming to an end back then too! Just think I was paying .60 a gallon in 1997.

[DevinSixtySeven]

With that 05, driven right you should be able to get 18-20mpg...

so...20k/yr at best case would mean 4K$/year in fuel. If you get a POS beater for 2K$, you break even in a year, and reduce your fuel cost by half thereafter. Maybe just break even vs the truck, if you gotta put parts to it.

You'll also miss the truck, particularly if you need the truck for hunting, camping, hauling...and instead you'll be driving the vehicular equivalent of the ugly fat girl because the smart pretty one was too high maintenance.

How 'bout keeping the truck for "truck stuff" and picking up an in-town runabout for 3-6K? Or a motorcycle? The truck won't mind if ya got a car on the side . Keep the smart, pretty, high-maintenance one, and get an easy one on the side.

-Sean

[dosequis driver]

Originally Posted by JBK23

Why don't you get a honda redgilne and still have a truck with V6 power and good mpg that should beat a honda civic any day !

[05Limited4x4]

Originally Posted by DevinSixtySeven

With that 05, driven right you should be able to get 18-20mpg...

so...20k/yr at best case would mean 4K$/year in fuel. If you get a POS beater for 2K$, you break even in a year, and reduce your fuel cost by half thereafter. Maybe just break even vs the truck, if you gotta put parts to it.

You'll also miss the truck, particularly if you need the truck for hunting, camping, hauling...and instead you'll be driving the vehicular equivalent of the ugly fat girl because the smart pretty one was too high maintenance.

How 'bout keeping the truck for "truck stuff" and picking up an in-town runabout for 3-6K? Or a motorcycle? The truck won't mind if ya got a car on the side . Keep the smart, pretty, high-maintenance one, and get an easy one on the side.

-Sean

Thats what I decided to do.. Bought the Tundra last week.. Decided to keep the miles off and gas cheap so I bought a beater car for 250 bucks.. Around here we get to take the car in for scrap around 325-350 so if the car goes junk you make money plus you get to go twice as long with the gas .. I also picked up a moped last summer for the shorter trips and just to cruise around on...

18K OTD for a truck plus 250 for a car and about 1500 for a moped='S less miles on truck, more money in the bank, less gas and makes me one happy person..

[dosequis driver]

Originally Posted by DH

You guys kill me with all the whining over gas prices. No way in hell I'd lose $10,000 to $20,000 just to save a few hundred dollars in MPG.

I'm not old enough to remember the 70's gas shortage but I'll bet everyone thought the world was coming to an end back then too! Just think I was paying .60 a gallon in 1997.

Venting is a normal and healthy thing to do... as is looking at long-term financial decisions.

Unlike you, I am old enough to remember the fuel crisis of the 70's and can remember paying less than $.50 for a gallon of gas. Now, just looking back over 6 years (see chart below) you can see where the "save a few hundred dollars" in MPG has now doubled and could easily be "save a few thousand dollars" when you're talking about making a decision to drive a vehicle that gets 18mpg or one that gets 45 mpg 15,000 miles a year for the next 5 - 10 years... assuming you buy and don't rent/lease your cars.

Me, I've always cut my losses because I've been riding and commuting by motorcycles for 30 years or so (mostly because I enjoy and prefer to ride things with two wheels over anything with four or more wheels) but have always had a car and either pick-up or Suburban sitting around for those times when a motorcycle isn't the right vehicle. However, the older I get the less I really "need" a truck: it's more or less a "nice to have". After all, I could certainly rent a truck when I really had to have a truck and a lot of folks are now in the same boat. As it is now, the truck has become our "road trip" vehicle as the only other car in the garage is my wife's S2000 (Empty nesters, don't you know). So, for example... we're headed off for a 1,500 mile trip on Thursday: that'll be about $358.00 in gas. A Camry Hybrid would make that same trip for about 1/2 of that... or $178.00. A Civic would do it for $138. It adds up fast.

The question is, does it add up enough over time to justify a change in vehicles? Before the bottom fell out of the truck market, it was close to a break-even proposition under certain constraints. However, recent market conditions have simply blown away those constraints so now it's very much like having held onto a bad stock that's value has fallen well below what you paid for it: Do you cut your losses or simply ride it out. Me, I own my truck so as mentioned in another thread it will likely become a permanent fixture in our livery which will eventually be expanded to include a vehicle with a hybrid or fuel cell...

These are just the realities of life and something worthy of discussion and, yes, venting.... to some, but certainly not all.

[redman733]

If you put 20k a year then you should just buy a good used car(or even a new one)..
I just bought a 04 Corolla w/23k on it and it basically pays for itself with the gas I save

I went fro $400ish a month for gas to $170ish....it's like a free car and I still have my truck

and i'm really happy to have the 4 banger because in all honestly when will it end?? it's nice to have a little piece of mind....

my Corolla got 29.5 mpg on my 1st tank and it was all local driving no highway and I'm hoping to get 36+ on the highway

[FLTundra06]

This stuff cracks me up! You just wake from a 6 month sleep?

[bri]

The reality is big truck don't sell now. About the only thing you can do with a big truck is pay it off and use it when you need it. The day after Katrina in 05 I went and got a used Corolla and parked my Tundra. I drive 35 to 40K a year and the money the Corolla saved on gas covered the cost of owning it. The other upside is instead of replacing a 25-30K truck every 5 years I replace a 15K car. The truck doesn't get any more winter use and putting just 5k a year on it I can drive it almost forever. It's got 117k highway miles on it, and it's worthless right now other than it looks new and does exactly what I need it to do. I couldn't possibly replace it with something as nice for the money. Expensive gas is here to stay. If you look back over the last three or four years there has been about a dollar run up every spring. The difference between this year and last year is gas didn't go down much over the winter. If the same happens this winter we will have 5 dollar gas next year for sure. I went out and got a new 08 Civic in early April for about 1500 under sticker. I really didn't want to replace the Corolla until this summer, but I was sure $4 gas was comming so I pulled the trigger before the market went nuts for small cars. Looking back now that saved me at least 1K, because right now Civics bring almost sticker around here. At 40mpg, I've got the gas situation covered for 5 years at which point there will be a lot more offerings out there for fuel efficient cars and better deals to be had.

[superpop]

Not to sound like an A hole but I could care less what gas costs, my company pays for mine. I am just shocked at the drop in value though.

[txbonds]

The price of gas is tough, but thankfully my commute is only 7 miles each way in a 45mph zone, so I wouldn't realize that much savings in the grand scheme of things with a civic or the likes.

However, in my prior life, I drove 23 miles each way on the interstate at 70+mph, and taking a loss on a 9mpg land rover running premium gas to get into a 20mpg colorado running regular gas, more than covered the loss in the first 18 months. Went from $600 per month on average to about $240 per month on average. After that, it put dollars in the pocket for the next 30 months of ownership before trading on my current tundra. Now, with my tundra, if I don't do lots of extra driving, I can make it on about $100 per month on average.

If I had the same commute now, I'd probably be looking at an alternative commuter vehicle as mentioned though, but would try to keep my truck.