If your not plowing, I’d recommend a Toyota Tundra like my own but in the 2003-2006 year range. 2000-2002 has an issue with towing in overdrive due to a weak planetary gear. If you live in a rust free area, that’s even better otherwise you need to look for one that has no serious rust issues and coat the frame to protect it from further degradation. A well taken care of Tundra can easily last in the 200k-300k mile range. Mine’s currently at 185K and is quite serviceable. The hardest part would be replacing a leaking exhaust manifold which runs around $1600 w/parts for both sides which I would never attempt myself and would leave up to a professional.
The aged the car, the more its maintenance. Buy NEW! 
OP says he can’t afford new.
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I hate to break it to you, but whether your car is new or old, it still needs maintenance at regular intervals. Mechanical failures that require repairs increase with age, but not maintenance. Maintenance should be routine no matter how new your car is.
From Should I Buy, Lease, or Steal My Next Car? by Tom and Ray Magliozzi:
- If you really need or want a relatively new car (less than three-years-old): Buy it, don’t lease it ($10,466/yr).
- If you’re willing to drive a car that’s six-years-old: Buy a new car, keep it for six years ($8,209/yr).
- If you’re willing to drive a car until it’s nine years old: Buy a three-year-old car and keep it for six years ($7,177/yr) or buy a new car and keep it for nine years ($7,483/yr).
- And, if your a cheapskate, or you don’t use a car much: Buy a heap, fix it up, and drive it into the ground ($5,312 or less/yr).
Here is a summary of the breakdown of the savings of each strategy over a 20 year period:
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If you choose the six year strategy (in the second bullet) over the three year strategy (in the first bullet), you save $45,140 over the course of 20 years. If you choose the nine year strategy over the three year strategy, you save $65,780 over the same 20 years. If you choose the “heap” strategy, you save $103,080.
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Likewise, if you choose the nine year strategy over the six year strategy, you save $20,640 over 20 years. If you choose the heap strategy over the six year strategy, you save $57,940.
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If you choose the heap strategy over the nine year strategy, you save $37,300 over 20 years.
…so buying a new car is a pretty costly proposition. With the high cost of depreciation on a new car, you’re better off buying a three year old car and keeping it for six years than buying a new car and keeping it for nine years. According to the book, buying a new car and keeping it for nine years will cost you $7,483, but buying a three year old car and keeping it for six years actually saves you $306.
Keep in mind this book I cited was printed at least 20 years ago (I can’t find a copyright date), so these numbers should be adjusted for inflation if you want the current scenario.
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Good advice. We’ve mostly bought cars at least 4-5 years old with low mileage and kept them for 10 years or more. Only 3 new cars in the last 59 years. I also had 3 company cars, but don’t count those.
Total net cash outlay buying cars was about $69,000 over the 1958 to 2017 timespan, or about $1170 per year in ownership costs. And we still have 2 good cars with 55,000 and 20,000 miles respectively.
Next to leasing, buying a new car every 2-3 years is the most expensive way of owning.
P.S. To drive this cheap and still have reliable and decent looking transportation requires careful shopping and maintaining. In addition to the regular maintenance and replacement of normal wear parts such as brakes, exhaust system, suspension components, etc., I did the following major repairs:
- Two ring & valve jobs, 1959 and 1964.
- Four paint jobs, 1970, 1977, 1994 , 1999. (on a 1965 Dodge Dart, 1966 Chevelle Malibu, 1984 Chevy Impala and 1988 Chevy Caprice.)
Every year I compared upkeep costs with those published by the AAA and other sources and came in lower than the published figures.
I’ve actually engaged in a combination of these strategies. I bought a new car in 1999, and I’ve been driving it for 16 years, so I’ve combined the six year strategy (by buying new) with the heap/cheapskate strategy. However, next time I think I’ll combine the nine year strategy with the heap/cheapskate strategy by buying a three year old car and driving it into the ground. This way I can avoid the depreciation cost of a new car.
I still come up significantly cheaper for my 15 year old truck I bought new for $27,500 tax, title & license and approximately $400/yr in maintenance & part expenses. Maybe because I left out the labor which I did myself. Had I paid someone else I would’ve dumped my vehicle after 6 years of ownership.
A forty year old vehicle is a real crap shoot. Unless you have a well equipped shop and wouldn’t need to depend on the old truck on a daily basis I would strongly recommend considering 2000 and newer models. I’m old and there isn’t much that can go wrong with a '74 Ford truck that I haven’t repaired in the past from the blinker switch to rear axle bearings but if I had my old '72 Bronco back I would never venture more than an hour away from home in it. But if you’re determined to go for a ‘classic’ the old Ford is about as simple and easily repaired a vehicle as you can find and parts are as common as dirt. If you buy it I’ll be watching for posts here concerning ignition modules and vague steering.
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Tom and Ray considered those and other factors in their calculations. Here are the factors they included:
-Ownership costs - those costs you would incur if the car is never driven, such as insurance, taxes/registration, and loan payments
-Running the car - gas, oil, tires, fluids, etc.
-Maintaining the car - everything listed in the maintenance schedule, and fixing things before they break
-Fixing the car - the cost of fixing things after they break, which relied on the following conclusions/assumptions:
- “Repair costs are virtually zero for a car that’s less than three years old.”
- Although repair costs increase over time, “they never equal the cost of new-car payments. So, generally speaking, the older a car you drive, the less you are going to spend, on average.”
- “Most cars (at the time the book was written) have a life of 100,000 to 150,000 miles.” Personally, I’d double that for any well-made car built in the last 20 years.
- “The average number of miles driven per year is close to 15,000.”
- The average “car should last seven to ten years.” (Again, I’d double that for modern cars.) Tom and Ray “used nine years” as a reasonable time to “dump” a car.
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Ummm…yeah…sure…
They sure don’t build 'em like they used to…thank God…
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That was before the era of shoulder seat belts, crumple zones and collapsible steering columns. I’d be curious how a large 70’s Cadillac would perform in a front offset crash against a modern car. Haven’t seen a video yet.
Basically it all gets down to where you live and do you have pesky inspections. Any older truck with a SBF or SBC will be cheap to repair and fairly reliable. The older trucks will get horrible gas mileage but simple and tons of parts out there. My brother purchased a low mileage (50K) city truck for $400 that someone forgot to put antifreeze in. We went to the pull apart salvage and got a good 350 long block for $125 and spent about $300 in new parts and he drove a great low mileage truck for less than $1000. It all depends on how mechanical you are and do you have the tools and place to work on the vehicle.
The price of new trucks are just insane and used trucks can be crazy high. People around here are trying to sell 250K - 300K mile trucks for crazy prices. But given that a new truck is so high, the used prices are propped up.
I have a FSuperduty truck (F450) that is my farm truck. It gets about 7 MPG not hauling and about 5.5 MPG while hauling a load. It is a good truck but is starting to show its age with leaking engine and transmission. As soon as I get the time I plan to pull the engine and transmission and rebuild them myself. While the engine is out, I plan to spend about $1000 on other replacement parts and install a propane kit to make the truck great again. For a couple thousand $ I will have a great truck again which is better than spending $20K+ for a newer truck. I personally value my retirement balance more than having a fancy new truck.
It just occurred to me that for the average guy who wants to avoid car debt the pre 1980 full size domestic cars and trucks do offer a significantly better opportunity to save on repairs and maintenance compared to the post 1990 models and the mid 1980s are a total waste unless local emissions laws allow for retrofitting earlier fuel and ignition systems. The fuel pump for a 1978 Chevrolet V-8 is <$20 and most DIYers can replace it in less than an hour while the fuel pump for a 2005 C-1500 would likely cost $800 to $1000 for professional replacement and few DIYers could do it.
If/when the easy money in automobile financing disappears the manufacturers will again be forced to design and produce more basic, affordable transportation.
Agree! From my first car in 1958 till 1978 I lived in the Great Lakes Rust Belt. The most I got out of a car was 13 years and 156,000 miles even with undercoating. Then I moved to the Rocky Mountain region with dry air and cold winters, My cars bought there lasted 20 years (Dodge Colt), 20 years (1984 Impala), 19 years (1988 caprice) and 18 years (1994 Nissan Sentra). The Impala reached over 300,000 miles before we sold it for $700.
Current vehicles are rust free and 10 and 5 years old respectively.
What year is your F Superduty . . . ?
What engine?
Such as what . . . ?
And how well equipped . . . or not . . . would such a vehicle be?
There are so many features which are mandated now, that truly simple, cheap, and low tech new vehicles are going to be impossible to sell in the US, for various reasons.
We all know what happened to Elio 
1997 460 gas with e4od
We still have a few of those in our fleet, same year and powertrain combo as yours
They’re hardworking beasts and guzzle a lot of gas, but they’re relatively simple to work on
But the ride is definitely much worse, versus the later F450 and F550 models with the Triton engines
I own an early 70’s Ford truck and an early 90’s Corolla, and the Corolla definitely wins if judged on overall reliability, frequency of needed repairs, and repair costs. I think the sweet spot is the early 90’s, basic electronic fuel injection, basic electronic ignition using a conventional distributor, but w/out the complicated evap, emissions, abs, electronic stability, obd ii, & multiple air bag complications that came later, in the mid-90’s. I don’t think you’d pay much price difference from a '91 to an '87, so maybe better to look for something in the early 90’s rather than the mid 80’s.
Rough ride is an understatement. It gets less rough when you get a couple thousand pounds on the bed. I had 5000 pounds of water on bed and it was a decent ride. Do to terrible gas mileage I only drive it when I need to move heavy loads like tractor, equipment, cattle, or hay. I bought it from local city with 99k miles on it 4 years ago. Now it only has 104k. I am planning to convert it to propane so it will be cheaper to drive.