How well maintained are State trucks?

Lanse

Well-known Member
Hey guys!

So, I"m considering purchasing a 2004 Ford F250 from the State of
Texas.

Its a 4x4 truck with 174,000 miles and a gas engine, presumably
the 5.4L...

I would be using it for a mobile welding service...

Tell me why this idea sucks :p

I"ve always heard that state owned vehicles are used, like they"re
meant to be, but given exceptional mantinance compared to other
vehicles on the road...

This particular truck is a former Game Warden vehicle (You can still
see the glue from where the decals were on the sides) if that makes
a difference.. It seems to have been better taken care of than the
other vehicles on the lot which is why I"m interested in it.

So:

1) Has anyone purchased, owned, driven etc a former state truck?
2) Has anyone had experience with this particular year and model of
truck? Ive been told by a Ford tech to change the plugs if they need
it, and it should be good to go.

Thanks in advance guys!
 
Lanse where have you been?
Is it real cheap / double the running time lots of idling miles i have a ford with over 300k miles
runs great have seen motors under 50k need replacing again if its real cheap maybe worth it.
hard to tell, nice to see you posting again tex!
 
Some do some do not. Its a crap shoot like most. Depends on who was in charge of seeing the work got done. If it was up to the driver, good luck. The best maintained trucks I have seen are owned by university or utilities with their own shops/ motor pools. Those guys really keep track of their machines.
I would only go the way you are thinking if the price was real right Lance.
Your best bet may be to buy a truck that an older person owned as an RV tow truck. Some of these see real good maintenance and are treated well.
 
Lanse I am over here in Centerville.Our local warden takes very good care of his truck. I see it at the local garage getting regular service.I would try and find out where it was used at. Or if there are any records of service.Just look it over real good.
 
Lanse: good to see you posting here again! Couple things--here in NY I attended many of the auctions that the state put on to dispose of their surplus equipment and got a number of things from there before scrap prices got so high they were worth as much to scrappers as they were as running vehicles. While in general, state vehicles tend to be reasonably well maintained, it really boils down to who did the maintenance on THAT truck as to whether or not it's been well maintained, and about the only way you can know that is with the maintenance records AND some knowledge of the shop or pool that did the work. Seeing that information is probably not available, be careful drawing any broad conclusions about whether or not the truck has been well maintained just because it's a state vehicle. The other thing to think about is that even an F250 gets awfully small for a welder truck by the time you stick a big welder in it plus the other tools you'll need, plus some scrap steel for patches, plus any pieces that need to be transported, etc. etc. Not to say it can't be done, but it's at the lower end of where you need to be. Hope things are going well for you!
 
Run from that motor. At my work we did plugs just as we hit 100,000 as the manual recommends. Our normal mechanic (does all the regular oil changes etc) broke off a couple off plugs. Finally limped it to the dealer. $600 for plug change. Had one serious break off above thread on plug. Had to pull had to get out. To pull had have to pull motor. Additionally, both heads cracked and had to be replaced. $6000 later we got the truck back. Week later the front catalytic converter Kurt go and plug the back one. $1600 later and finally back on road.

Ours is in a f350 and it seems a little weak. In a f250 it might be okay for around town, but heavy hauling I would pass.

In terms of maintenance, working in a government agency that maintained its own vehicles, overall I would say they do a pretty good job. However, when the repair cost exceeds the value the of the vehicle, it goes to auction. Some people take good care of the inside and some don't. All depends on the operator. Normally we would keep vehicles to about 125,000-150,000 miles and this was a law enforcement agency I was with. So at 174,000 I would say it hit it's mark to be replaced and might be a good truck, but look into the motor.
 
As far as your question, based on what I have seen, it"s like others have said, the maintenance on them is a crap shoot.

That said, if the truck is an ex ranger truck, what kind of bed does it have on it? Too, you say it"s only an F250.

That said, I"ve been doing field service on either construction equipment, or in the industrial maintenance field, for over 20 years, and in my opinion an F250 will be way too lite weight of a truck for what your doing. The reason I say that is that a 250 is supposedly a 3/4 ton truck. So, if you take the weight of a decent service bed, add around 500 lbs for a engine drive welder, a hundred lbs or so more for rods, a couple hundred more for torch bottles, even more for basic hand tools, etc, etc, etc, then your getting really close to having the truck loaded to it"s weight limit all the time. This leaves you very little weight allowance for anything else.

I don"t know what your looking to spend, but if your in no real hurry, I"d suggest that you keep on looking and find an older truck with a decent service bed, and at least a small crane. You"d be amazed how handy the crane will come in when you need to pick up something and flip over to get to the spot that needs to be welded, etc. Too, with a service bed, you"ve got plenty of room to put your hand tools (which you will need more than you might think), room to store your rods, grinders, etc in the dry, along with anything else you might need to keep handy.

Too, if you find an older truck it will be a lot easier for you to do your own repairs to it if, and when you have a problem. That is a huge plus when it"s your own truck, and something happens that keeps you from working, and you can make the needed repairs on your own without having to rely on some shop to drop everything they are doing to make the repairs for you.

All that said, we haven"t seen you around here in awhile. I hope everything is going good for you. I know around here business is the best it"s been in years, and if you can get a good customer base you ought to be able to make a decent living for yourself. GOOD LUCK.
 
If it is a true state truck you can run into problems with parts if it was a fleet type buy program truck. I have found that out since I have a Missouri state conservation truck and have had a real hard time finding parts to repair the brakes on it and it only has 80K miles on it
 
Hey stranger, how you been? A bunch of us have been wondering what you've been up to. I guess you're still welding but have you looked into an apprenticeship or something along those lines? The biggest caution I would have regarding running a welding rig is if you need to be a licensed journeyman. The other concern is liability insurance. In Alberta you can't advertise your services unless you are a journeyman.

Some gov't. vehicles are well maintained and some aren't. A lot depends on who's driving it.
 
Was just thinking about you for some odd reason, ironic you posted something here LOL ! Hope all is well.

It depends on their fleet maintenance, used to be NYS Thruway Authority, maintained all their equipment, well, always worth going to their annual surplus auctions, we owned a former thruway mowing tractor a '64 ford 4000 S-0-S, it performed well for many years.

Up the road 10 miles or so from here, there is a dealer of former fleet vehicles, state and other agencies etc. most of those and I know some owners of same, that I see constantly on the road, have gotten good service out of ones they have bought from this dealer, who buys in bulk when they are auctioned off. A customer of mine needed a service truck and bought one, I drove it, a 1 ton chevy with an enclosed utility body, ran fine, went down the road straight, no rust.

You must look these over very carefully and drive with a skeptical eye, yet you may find a lemon, most times, they can be a cost saving purchase, but you really need to look it over but good.
 
ADOT maintains their fleet trucks pretty well until they reach a certain point where the formula tells them not to put any more money into them. Vehicles usually don't get placed on the auction until they reach the "Do Not Repair" stage.

I would not buy a used vehicle from the state. Heavy equipment is different; it can be in good condition or a total disaster.

Everything is sold "As Is", so it's strictly "Buyer Beware".
 
I am with Stick Welding here, depends on who had it. Some are fleet vehicles driven by whom ever gets in them and others are more or less assigned. Some people take care of them some abuse the heck out of them because "it aint mine" If you get one that was assigned and the person was the caring type then it should be OK. Usually they are serviced regularly and have things like brakes taken care of. Something can be told about it by the general condition. If the interior is torn up and the body is dented up everywhere it is a safe bet that who ever had it could care less. The 5.4 while not stellar is far from a POS. I have owned three of them. Spark plugs will be an issue the first time they are changed. 04 should have the "improved type" that break off in the head instead of pulling the threads out like the first type. If you purchase every tool required to deal with the various ways they break off you will spend $200 plus the plugs. Takes half a day to change them when things go well, 8 hrs if not. If you use nickle anti seize on them as you are supposed to and change them every 50K after that you are done with spark plug troubles. The camshaft phasers and chains are problems in vehicles that have not been serviced regularly and/or have excessive idling time.
 
I worked in Field Operations for a Texas agency for over 30 years. Our trucks did not see rugged off road use and were maintained. Game Warden trucks probably have seen quite a bit of off road/gravel road use but are probably well maintained. If it came from any of the counties with Eagle Ford Shale activity even the "paved" roads are now gravel roads and some require 4 X 4.
 
You're looking at buying a used truck, like any used vehicle check it over carefully. With that many miles on it I suspect it reached a formula replacement point, that is it's being replaced because their formula says it's time. Be really careful about ones that are young and for sale unless there's a bunch of them. In a former position I was responsible for a county motor pool, some vehicles got beat like a red-headed step child, other got reasonable treatment. I doubled our salvage recovery on vehicles by being more strict about vehicle abuse (thus putting me in the union's sights as someone to be eliminated)and better about maintenance. The benefit folks got about buying surplus vehicles from us was we disclosed all known defects and provided complete service records. My theory was government shouldn't be screwing over it's citizens and the more I could tell you about the vehicle the less unknowns you have to worry about. We were on a shorter rotation (5yrs/75,000 miles) but we made some changes to the trucks we were buying and the highway department was going to start picking them up at the 5/75,000 point and run them out to 175-200,000 miles as crew transport trucks.
 
174,000 miles sounds like a lot if we were still In The 1980's, you are gonna have to work on it a little bit to keep it going but if you take care of it it will go 300,000 miles pretty easy. My dad has a 1997 f-150 with 250,000 and very few issues and does not burn a drop of oil.
 

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