Besides price, my problem with old low-mile cars and trucks is all the maintenance that may not have been done. Most every maintenance item has a “Y,000 miles or X months, whichever comes first”, but did the owner honor the X months? And is it documented? There could be a lot of catch-up costs involved. And has it been driven regularly, or put up somewhere for years? The fuel system could need a major cleanout.
Being from a rust belt state, 21 year old trucks are a no-go as rust never sleeps.
From a state where rust is not an issue, heat damage in a low humidity state is a real issue. A 21 year old truck from San Jose might have intact vinyl and rubber seals where one from Arizona will not.
A relative of mine has a 2003 Chevrolet that he’s planning to be his last truck in his life.
He’s retired and puts maybe 2500 miles a year on his truck, driving around town. As a result, he self-justifies getting the oil changed maybe every other year.
Some of you may also agree with that approach. However, on a 21 year old truck with “only” 30K miles… I have to wonder how many oil changes the truck has actually had? How many other things have been neglected due to “low miles”?
I’d pass, too.
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On balance, I’d rather deal with the seals. Those can be replaced. Rust on a truck that’s been in a salt state for 20+ years usually means you’re stuck with it because the cost to fix it all would buy you a new truck.
This is one of those ( I don’t understand ) questions . If I am looking at a vehicle that I think is overpriced I make an offer that I can live with . I really don’t care if anyone thinks I paid too much if I still buy it at the original price .
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Jalopnik used to be one of the better automotive websites around. Now, not so much. They went from DeMuro, Harris, Rogoway, and Tracy to whatever political-cause du jour-spouting virtue-signaling contributors they can find these days. It’s unfortunate.
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Tracy’s still there. He’s been writing a series about how he got in trouble with his city for hoarding a bunch of junker jeeps in his front yard. 
The better journalists were hired by better companies. Stef Schrader is at The Drive as is Mate Petrane, and Patrick George. Road and Track grabbed some, as did Motor Trend.
DeMuro is an industry all by himself!
The landscape company I manage bought last year a 1993 Ford F-250 with only 32,000 miles. It’s four wheel drive with a big V8. It’s in show room new condition. The seat is like new, no wear at all. We paid 12,000 for it, but it had a new plow a really good brand never used and a brand new salt spreader on the back. I went over all the records since new and it showed all the service it had done. It runs like new, it doesn’t get a lot of use but it’s a back up.
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Somehow I don’t think the F250 relates to the F150 . The plow and spreader alone make up part of the price . Apples and Oranges .
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Styling is too curvey. I prefer a little more square corners.
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How do you plan to use the truck? Do you have things to haul? Are you going to tow a horse trailer or a travel trailer? Is this truck going to be used to commute to a job?
I ask these questions because a pickup should be selected for the job one intends it to do. Back in 1972, I bought a used 1950 one ton pickup truck. We had purchased 5 acres in the country. I used it to haul wire fence and posts. I used it to stretch the fence. I used it to haul sand for the horse stalls in the pole barn we had built.
I sold the truck three years later. (I took a real beating in depreciation. I paid $115 for the truck in 1972 and only got $110 for it in 1975).
Although I didn’t buy another truck, I was considering trading our older car for a Ford Courier or Chevrolet LUV that I could use to commute to work and do light hauling.
Hi triedaq, plan for the truck is to haul stuff around town (my partner is a landscaper) and use as an evac vehicle if necessary (hopefully never). Won’t tow a trailer often but might if we move.
You’re gonna want to check the exact specs of that truck. Some F150’s from that year could only haul 780 pounds. That includes the driver, passengers, and whatever’s in the bed. A single yard of mulch could put you over the limit, and you wouldn’t be able to haul even half a yard of dirt.
@Jordan-46. @shadowfax has given you good advice. Size the truck to the use you will put the truck. It doesn’t take much soil to overload a pickup truck. The Chevy one ton pickup I owned had a gross vehicle weight of 8800 pounds. About a mile from my house, there was excavation going on for a new house. I needed some fill dirt, so I drove over and the contractor said I could have a pickup load. I started shoveling and had what looked like a small amount. The contractor came over and said “I think you are overloading your truck”. He was right. I had to drive very slowly back home. The truck was hard to handle. This was a load of fill dirt that I had hand shoveled in less than 15 minutes.
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My old Mitsubishi mini-truck actually had a higher payload capacity than my current Tundra, which is both amusing and annoying.
I remember once bringing home a yard of dirt (around 2000 pounds, which means I was right at the limit, but it was a 5 minute drive on slow roads). I got home too late to shovel the dirt out, and it rained overnight. Now I’ve got 3,000 pounds of dirt in the thing. It looked like a low-rider.
I only get half a yard of dirt at a time in the Tundra, and it has a higher payload capacity than some of those '90’s F-150’s. It doesn’t look like very much dirt in there at all.
@shadowfax. I think about shoveling dirt into the truck, driving steel fence posts into the ground, stretching fence, hauling and hanging drywall and I wouldn’t even want to try these things today. When I think about buying a pickup and the things I could haul, I then think about what I did when I was younger and my desire to own a truck evaporates.
Now if I need dirt or mulch, I call someone.
Our message to the OP still stands. Determine what you intend to haul with the truck and size the truck to fit your needs. Some years back when slide-in truck campers were popular, Consumer Reports tested four makes of 3/4 ton pickups–Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge, and International. I don’t remember all of the report, but a couple of the trucks weren’t up to the job and the rest were barely adequate.
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As you get older and let go of “manly” truck image issues… You start to realize it’s a heck of a lot cheaper to pay for delivery on a lot of things, instead of driving an empty truck around all the time.
Just my experience. 
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A 20 year old truck with 31K should be worth about the same as a 20 year old truck with 100K miles. In fact maybe even less depending on how the truck was used. Mileage is only one factor but other issues like rust and rubber parts continue regardless of mileage. Then there is always the problem of getting parts-new or used.
In my case, the truck isn’t a daily driver, so when it gets driven, it’s because it’s hauling something. But I’m almost fondly looking forward to being in @Triedaq’s shoes and ditching the truck in favor of delivery people. I’ll still keep the truck to pull a camper with, though.
If I had everything delivered now, I’d spend a lot of money. If I haul things in the truck about 250 times, it’ll have paid for itself in saved delivery fees, and we’re still building out our yard, so there’s a lot of landscaping materials to be hauled in the future. The old truck was even better. It was so cheap that it had paid for itself within a month of purchase.