I wouldn't want a truck with a big lift because its hard to actually use it for a truck. Its hard to load stuff up into it. Loading a quad with ramps will give you a steep angle unless you get a really long set of ramps. Most full size trucks get horrible fuel economy, that's just how it is. If you don't want to spend a ton of money, I'd look at at a late 90's Silverado or F150 4x4. Dodge Ram would be good too. I wouldn't buy a truck with known problems unless they're practically giving it away for like $500. You can probably find something in decent shape in the $3000-$3500 range that you can take home and start driving. Its still an older truck, it will need work in the future. But buying one that you know already needs work is just an extra headache I wouldn't want. It will end up costing you more money to fix it than the truck is worth too.

 

Thanks for the really. I agree raised up trucks get worse gas milage and are less usable. However, I want to buy a truck that has some sort of engine/mechanical problem because me and my grandpa could fix it and it would greatly reduce the price. Also, if you can find a truck for $500, that thing must be completely trashed!

 

That's a good point.

 

Sometimes you can find a truck with minor problems that don't require a lot of money to fix. Even if you have access to and have the help of a master mechanic, I'd rather not have to put a lot of effort into restoring a truck. I have bought a few cheap trucks in the last 15 years or so. The only one that was actually worth the money was a 1994 Chevy 4x4 I bought in 2011 for $1000. It only needed minor tuning because it was a propane delivery truck set up to run on propane and gas. I had my local mechanic tune it to run on only gas and to remove the tank and plumbing. It idled poorly when set up to run on both. It ran much better after he worked on it, I think it only cost about $200. Also had to replace brake lines as they were shot, another $200. I drove it for about 3 years. Had to replace radiator also, $400 for that. Just routine maintence other than that. Could have kept it longer, it still ran great even with almost 250K miles on it. Engine and transmission were both solid, even wasn't that rusted out even though it was 20 years old when I got rid of it. 4x4 still worked great too.

 

Thanks for the reply. Good point. Im still a "kid" and don't have to much money to buy a vehicle. Thats why I wanted a Brocken truck that we could fix. That is a good idea to find a truck with just minor problems.

 

I had a couple other cheap trucks, an S10 4x4 that I paid $400 and an older F250 4x4 that I paid $600 for. So really cheap trucks are out there, but there's a reason they're really cheap. Both of those trucks lasted about a year before a major failure. The S-10's transmission went out and the F250 had an engine failure. Both were so old that they just weren't worth fixing. I got about $500 in scrap metal for the f250 selling to a junkyard. I traded the S10 in for a newer S10 and got my $400 out of it. It drove fine as long as you didn't go very far, more than about 10 miles the transmission would overheat and slip. I think they planned to use it for hauling junk.

 

Ok. I have seen a couple super cheep trucks but they are super old, rusted and Brocken. Just for my to drive to school its a little over 10 miles so I would need a vehicle more reliable than the vehicles you described. Any trucks that you think are solid that I should look for