We’ve got a transmission out in one of our trucks. Lee talks about maintenance and how to save money on repairs in this video.
What’s going on guys? Sunday evening here at the shop. We do truck maintenance every other Sunday for our Raleigh location. This truck right here broke down with a bad transmission. What I want to talk to everybody about is, these Isuzu trucks they’re kind of the standard for the junk removal industry. I know a lot of you that are watching these YouTube videos aren’t using these Isuzu trucks. You’ve got pickup trucks, trailers, or other kinds of dump trucks that kind of stuff. The transmissions on these trucks are good. These Isuzu trucks are good for about 240,000 miles and that’s decent for a diesel truck hauling. Hauling a bunch of weight and all like that. Automatic transmission, 240,000 miles is pretty good. The problem is this transmission, they’re about between $5,000 and $6,000. Almost as much as the engine. So, when you’re buying brand-new, it is close to $6,000. You install them. You’re going to have about $2,000 for the labor if you go to a dealer. It’s going to be around $8,000 to put a new transmission in one of these trucks. The engine is about the same amount. The engine is about a $6,000. It’s going to take a little bit more labor, so it’s going to be about $3000 for the labor. $9,000 or $10,000 to put an engine if you go to one of the dealers. It’s critical and hard to do, but it’s really important to do your best to try and find a mechanic that can actually do your work. It’s great if they can come to you. We’ve been blessed to have found a gentleman named Lee Stevens in this area. He does a lot of work. Pretty much all the work, all the main work on our vehicles. He comes to us. We got the shop facility right here that we’re able to use. He comes to us and he does all repairs. The transmission, something that we have done. This will be the third transmission that we’ve done since we’ve been in business. We get a junkyard transmission. This particular transmission at a junkyard, you can pick up for about $1500 bucks once you turned your core back in. A little less than that, but somewhere around $1,500 you can get.
The issue with a lot of junkyard transmissions is you don’t know how many miles have actually been put on them, but generally, they’re in the junkyard because they’d been wrecked. If you get 150,000 miles, you still probably got a good transmission. 150,000 to 200,000 miles to get it out of that transmission.
Checking Junk Trucks
If you can ask the junkyard how many miles on that truck before they got that transmission. A lot of times, the place we deal with the transmission might still be in the truck or they might actually ride on the transmission, the number of miles. If you can get that information, that’s a definite plus. That way you know, you’re not buying something that’s mostly worn out. We’ve had good luck with junkyard transmissions though, so I can’t complain. That truck right there, one of the junkyard transmissions we put in there. That truck got about 300,000 miles on it. We got about 170,000 miles out of that junkyard transmission and that’s decent. That was especially when we had just put an engine on that truck. That was a bad buy. That was the second truck we purchased. We wound up within 30,000 miles, having to put an engine and transmission on it. That was a poor purchase on our part. That’s the only time we’ve ever bought a truck sight unseen. We bought it right off a website. We never went out there and actually looked at it. We had them bring the truck to us. We paid an airline ticket for the guy to go back. The truck had a weird sound on the engine, but it was a different engine than what we’re used to.
As you notice, truck one back there also got the hood lifted up on it. It got some sort of fuel issue. That truck got about 340,000 miles on an original engine. We put a transmission in it. It had about 270,000 miles when we stuck the transmission on it. Truck one has been an excellent truck. It’s down on power now and I’m hopeful it’s not a complete engine failure. It turns over good, but I mean it’s just getting worn out. It just has a whole lot of compression. We could be putting an engine in that truck soon, but we’re going to try and keep it going. We’re going to try and run as hard as we can.
A lot of people will upgrade their trucks. I won’t say we never will. We very well might. We’re in the point now on the growth phase where we’re adding trucks just to keep up with growth. It’s hard to upgrade existing trucks and add new trucks at the same time. As you can see, we’ve got a couple of new ones back there to go along. We got trucks scattered all throughout this property right. We got few newer trucks over there. That’s a 2011 model and then a 2017 or 2018. I think it’s 2017. It could be a 2018 truck. We got some new ones in our Greensborough location too. Used trucks work great. You can do them on a budget. You can get three, almost three decent used trucks for the price of a new one.
The Need for Good Quality Trucks
New ones do work pretty good too, once your business is more established or when you’re brand new. When you have to have a very reliable vehicle. It’s always nice to have a mix. You have a mix of both. It is nice having new ones because they’re generally more reliable. They’re not going to break down as much. To sum this video up. Don’t be afraid of junkyard parts, junkyard transmissions. We put a junkyard rear end of one of these trucks. It saves you a tremendous amount of money. Do your very best to try and find a good mechanic that’ll come to you and work on your stuff if you have a place for it. The problem with the dealers is they’re obviously very expensive. Two, unless you bought the truck through them, they’re very slow generally on their service. A couple of days out and that’s 2 or 3 days.
You must be having to rent a truck or you’re going to be down without a vehicle. That’s a couple of good reasons a to do that. Three, dealers are not going to do junkyard parts. They only put in new parts and you’re adding tremendously to the cost. Again, transmission on that truck back there costs around $5,000. You can get a junkyard transmission for about $1500. I think I’ll have another episode of trash talk coming up. I just wanted to talk to everybody about these trucks. Isuzu trucks are good overall. They got their quirks about them. We’ve got stuff that’s going to wear out, but they’re very maneuverable. They’re easy for you guys to drive when you have inexperienced drivers. Those of you out there, your pickup trucks and trailers.
It’s great when you’re on the truck, but as soon as you start hiring semi-inexperienced drivers. They’re going to tear up your trucks and trailers. They don’t maneuver well, so the harder to get into certain places. Certain places you can’t get a trailer and you might be able to get one of those trucks. Isuzu trucks are great. Can you buy used 1-800-GOT-JUNK? trucks for about $25,000. You just got to know what you’re looking for when you buy them and you’re going to have to work on them every so often. That’s part of the deal. We’ll catch everybody out real soon. You all have a great Sunday. We’ll talk to you later this evening.