Tacoma

My current truck is a 2008 Toyota Tacoma. It has 111 thousand miles on it, and I’d kind of like to replace it.

One reason is that my kids are getting too big for its back seat, as it has a small cab (the “Access Cab” with the suicide doors.) The second reason is my dad would like to buy an old truck to help maintain his property.

Now Mr. Money Mustache would say that I need to kill my clown-like car habit and I agree. But Mr. Money Mustache used to make $400,000 a year off his blog so I may have to take Mr. Money Mustache’s advice with a grain of salt. Anyway I live in suburban Georgia, my job has a “return to office” policy and I commute 23 miles 2x a week.

We do go camping and we carry stuff, and I go mountain biking, so we like having a pickup truck, and while I’d like to go electric, a $74,000 truck is not in the budget. My dream car would be the Toyota RAV4 plug in hybrid, but I’m not sure how we would go camping, so I guess I’m buying another pickup truck, burning gas, and warming the planet.

During covid the price on used cars went very high. It went so high that when we bought a car in 2020, it didn’t make sense to buy a used car as there wasn’t much of a difference in price between new and used.

I’ve read that prices in the used car market have dropped a lot in 2023. New car prices are cooling Used car prices are falling, too

Even pickup truck prices are falling.

Used truck infographic from Carfax.com:

So it’d be better to wait to buy a truck as the market is deflationary. In fact it looks like the market is near its all-time high, so waiting would be preferable. But my dad would like the truck now, so I’d like to sell it to him.

Do we need 4 wheel drive? No. You’re not going to need it. I asked my friend Patrick in Mississippi if he had 4WD on his truck and he put it succinctly: “No. It doesn’t snow, and I don’t hunt.” Do we need an off-road suspension? No, we’ve done fine on all the gravel roads we’ve found so far. Do we need leather seats, fancy wheels, a sun roof? No, no, and no.

All we need is the double cab, a 5 foot bed so it’s not too long, a V6 engine so that we can pull a little trailer and it’s not underpowered, and voila:

SR5 3.5L V6 engine AT 4x2 5-ft. bed Double Cab

I use Apple CarPlay which became available in 2018 in the Tacoma so if I’m going to upgrade, I’d like to have that.

So let’s see if there’s a sweet spot in price.

2023 : $38K Autonation Toyota

2021 : $35K Carmax, 41K miles

2019 : $36K ? Carvana, 25K miles Well, that seems expensive.

So from a quick analysis, it doesn’t seem like it makes sense to buy used. Brand new is $4,000 more than two years old used with 41K miles.

Update - Aug 24, 2023

We bought it. 2023 Toyota Tacoma, SR5 3.5L V6 engine AT 4x2 5-ft. bed Double Cab. Price before taxes : $37.5K, price after taxes $40K. Now that we have it I kind of wish it had the “technology package” so it would have the blind spot checkers on the side view mirrors. Oh well, next time.

Taco truck