10_Selecting A Transportation Vehicle

Selecting A Transportation Vehicle

The day after we signed the purchasing agreement for the house, we went to Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, my husband’s hometown, to take his construction tools. As mentioned earlier, we would also need a transportation vehicle. For this, we were thinking to buy a used truck. First, because our budget was limited; we only had $2K left in our budget. Second, we would only need the vehicle during the renovation, more or less for 3 months. Third, pickup trucks seemed the ultimate transportation vehicle for construction jobs. So, pickup truck it was.

Pickup Trucks Hunting

We looked for pickup trucks on Craigslist and contacted the ones that we were interested with.

We also drive around the town to local car dealers. We didn’t look on eBay because we didn’t want to buy a car that we couldn’t test drive it. 

Apparently, it wasn’t easy to find a pickup truck with $2K budget. People that we contacted through Craigslist didn’t reply back. Maybe they had sold their trucks and didn’t bother to put the ads down. With the car dealers, most of them sold second hand pickup trucks started from $4K; beside, we couldn’t find any beat-up pickup truck.

We drove around for the whole day until we found a car dealer slightly out of town. There, we found a van on our budget. Well, it was a passenger vehicle with complete seats; but it opened our eyes to broaden our perspective. We shouldn’t just be fixated to trucks; we should also consider vans. The passenger seats could be taken off to create more space for construction materials.

We test-drove the van, only to find another van being offered on a street side. We went back to the dealer and told the salesman that we would think about it; we might come back tomorrow. We then went to the van on the street to try it. However, the van wouldn’t start at all, so we backed out.

We went home without anything. We tried to re-strategize our trucks/vans hunting and decided to broaden our search. We kept looking on Craigslist with broader search area, and this strategy worked. We found 2 vans within our price range in 2 car dealers outside Waynesboro. We decided to visit them on the next day.

Finding The Right Vehicle

On June 17^th, the search continued. This time, we had my mother in law with us. If we bought a car, then we could drive our old and new cars back. I still hadn’t gotten my drivers license, so I shouldn’t drive.

Anyway, we drove to our first car dealer. It was out of town and we were a bit lost to find it; the address mentioned on the Internet didn’t come out right on a GPS. So we had to drive back and forth before we finally found it; and only to find out that it was closed on Sunday. Argh!

We went to the second car dealer in a town called Carlisle, or about 50 miles from Waynesboro. We went to a car dealer called Clever Choice. There, we saw a lot of second hand cars within our price range! We were so happy; finally we could find our transportation vehicle. We looked around on the pickup trucks and vans until we saw a van with no seats for $1.3K! That was so perfect. The price was within our budget and the seats had already being taken off; so no more works to do for us. The appearance still looked good: no dents, no rusts, and no holes. The AC and the radio worked very well. So it was a good price.  There was one thing that we couldn’t test it, though. The van had a cassette player! I wish we still kept some cassettes… Anyway, furthermore, by buying it in a dealer, we didn’t have to take care of the taxes and license plate by ourselves. In the end, we spent $1,667.95; which was still under our budget. Finally, we had our luck!

*I took picture of the van right after we bought it. However, my phone was broken and I had to restart it. I thought I had transferred the pictures to my laptop, but apparently I was wrong L

Our awesome van.

Our van was equipped with a cassette player. Too bad, we didn't have any cassette anymore :(

First Trouble With The Van

On June 19^th, we drove back to North Carolina with out new van, carrying some of construction tools that my husband had. We were unsure on how heavy the van could take, so we still left some tools like a saw table and painting tools.

*Again, I took picture of it and lost it L

We had a smooth ride with the new van. It was raining hard along the way but nothing was leaking, so it was good. However, about a little bit more than halfway, the van broke down!

We were on the highway 95 in Virginia during the heavy raining and traffic jam. The van just didn’t want to get started. My husband had to embrace the rain and open the car’s hood. Cars behind us honked and just passed by while watching us. Luckily, my husband realized what was wrong quickly. It was the battery; the lights were all off. He tightened the battery cables and tried to start the car again. It worked!

We then drove to a nearby rest area to ensure that there were no more loose cables in the van. After that, no more troubles until we reached our apartment.