Cars and Trucks

             On June 10, we had the closing on our old house. Everything went quite smoothly. I was able to use the proceeds from the sale to pay off the mortgage on the house we are sharing with our daughter. At last, I thought, life would slow down a little. But alas, this was not to be.

            A few weeks before we had gotten a variety of blinking lights on our Subaru Outback – including the dreaded check engine light. But this can be as innocuous as not clicking the cover on the gas cap tightly – and I’ve had that happen before. The solution to that problem is to click it down tightly, then drive for a while. Otherwise, you have to disconnect the battery, let it sit for a while to reset the condition, then refasten it. But that did not work this time.

            The week after closing I scheduled our vehicles with our local mechanic, Ron Detwiler, as they both needed an inspection before the end of June. Unfortunately, he did not have good news for me – the lights were due to the transmission. The CVT in Subarus of that age had been having problems and the company had given a special 10-year/100,000 miles warranty. But that little “/” meant that if either of the conditions was reached that the warranty was no longer valid. While we only had 91,000 miles, our car was a 2014 and was now 11 years old. So we were out of luck. And the cost to fix the problem was going to be more than the car was worth!

            My wife is a plantaholic, meaning that she spends a lot of time (and money) on plants. But carrying plants or bags of mulch in the back of a car means that it’s constantly getting dirty. So she really wanted to have a truck this time. Kim and I did a LOT of looking to see what was available – starting with smaller trucks (Ford Maverick), then adding in mid-sized and eventually full-sized trucks. But we quickly ruled out the smaller ones as the back seats were too cramped for our growing grandsons. And new larger ones were much too pricy ($60K) and had the same trade-off issue which meant that getting a large enough rear seat meant getting a smaller truck bed – some being only 4’ long.

            Sitting the looking aside for a few days, we considered what the cost might be if we got two used vehicles – a truck for Donna (which would not get a lot of usage so the cost of fuel would be reasonable), and a passenger car for all our other driving (including running the boys around until Ethan is old enough to drive in a few years). So we broke our looking into three pieces – a used truck which was not for moving people, only plants; a lightly used car with enough rear-seat space for the boys; and a plan for getting rid of our old Outback.

 

            Part 1 – a truck for Donna – We quickly found that used trucks were all VERY used with over 100K miles – not something we were prepared to consider. But it was then that something happened that we can only describe as a God moment. Donna recalled that many years ago when she was listening to a local Christian radio station that they ran ads for something called _____ Great Cars in Sinking Spring, about 35 miles from here. Some quick checking revealed that the company was called John’s Great Cars and they had since moved to West Reading (about 15 years ago!). We looked up their website and found that while they had only a few used trucks, they had just listed one that day that met our requirements.

[Dodge Ram]

 

This is a one-owner Red Dodge Ram. While it’s from 2013, it only has 43K miles on it and the only damage is a dent on one corner of the box. It’s been garaged its entire life and the prior owner had just moved and no longer had a garage for it and was sad to see it go. We made an appointment to go see it, noting that they had not even had a chance to clean/detail it yet. The owner, John, called it a unicorn as it was a one-of-a-kind with such low mileage. We immediately put down a small deposit and as soon as they can complete the detailing in a few days we’ll go pick it up.

 

            Part 2 – A car for me – Fortunately, cars are not as hard to find as trucks. Looking at another Subaru Outback (which has a large enough rear seat for our growing boys), we noted that our local dealer (about 10 miles away), in order to meet the needs of their customer base, buys a large quantity of Outbacks in the fall so that they have many different ones for their customers to choose from and can sell them right off the lot instead of having to order them and wait for delivery from the manufacturer. Those that don’t sell by January/February they then title for use as loaner vehicles for customers getting servicing there. Then in May/June they sell off those as they prepare for the new models coming in the next fall. Thus, right around this time of year they have a quantity of vehicles that have only been driven by service customers. When we started looking they had nine of these lightly-used vehicles. Each had 2-3K miles during their 3 months of usage and all had the most commonly desired features, but not the less asked-for features or non-mainline colors.

            Since this will likely last for many years and eventually be driven by Kim and our grandsons, I let her pick out the top ones that she liked. As I write this, I’m scheduled to go to the dealer tomorrow morning and may have a new Outback by the end of the day.

[2025 Outback]

 

            Part 3 – Getting rid of our old Outback – Because of the transmission issues, I know that our old car is only worth about $500. And I’m not sure that it would even be able to make a trip to any of the dealers to offer as a trade-in. So, I decided that we’d donate it to a charity that would be able to come pick it up. After not much research, it will be going to Habitat for Humanity. They have a branch that does this for them with about half of these donations being cleaned up and auctioned off and half being crushed for scrap. They get the funds from both types and the donor gets a tax credit. Ours will quite surely be of the scrap kind. I’ve made the initial arrangements, gotten the title assigned and notarized to them, removed the license plate, and am just awaiting a call to schedule the pickup. They don’t need the vehicle to be running, only that it can move forward and backward and it have four inflated tires so they can roll it up on the truck that will come for it. Pretty painless. This will also greatly simplify the process of purchasing either of the above vehicles as I don’t have to worry about the trade-in process.

 

            Conclusion – While getting not one but two new (to us) vehicles right after going through the home sale process was not something that I was planning on, in the end I’ll spend less than the cost of one new vehicle. We’re still working through the logistics of which vehicle will park where. Eventually it will be four vehicles (Kim’s Crosstrek, the new Outback, the truck, and Matthew’s car), but there will be days this week when we may have the old Outback as well and we’ll have to do some shuffling. But God has been good to us throughout this process – especially with the timing coming after the sale of our former house so we have the necessary funds. That’s not to say that it would have been nicer to not have the stress of all of this. But we’ll give Him all the glory – both now and in the coming years.