Driving 'til they drop

Here’s an interesting article I came across recently: “Americans Are Driving Their Cars To Death In Order To Save Money.”

The article states: “Drivers across the country are increasingly holding onto their cars for longer than ever, with an increasing number hitting more than 100,000 miles in their cars, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The trend comes as drivers realize the savings to be had by simply not replacing their car every five years. … [T]he average age of a car on U.S. roads has now risen to 12.5 years after six straight years of increases, reports the WSJ. In fact, cars over 10 years old now account for more than 40 percent of the cars on America’s roads. … But why the sudden desire to hold onto our cars for longer? It all comes down to spiraling repair costs and higher insurance premiums for newer vehicles, according to the WSJ. What was once a simple fix on older models, can now require sensor replacements, new screens and all kinds of electronics fixes that can see the bill at your local shop rise and rise.”

This is a subject near and dear to our hearts at the moment because we just finished with a lot of repair work for our older vehicles. Our 30-year-old truck, in particular, was giving us issues … so many issues that we thought it was time to sell it and purchase a new (used) pickup.

(The photo above is the same make and model as our current, but it’s a stock photo. Ours is far more beat up.)

A search through the used-truck market made us realize even a cheap used truck was virtually out of our price range. For the time being, we spent what was necessary to get our older truck to keep going for a few more years.

We know this is not something we can do forever, but man I don’t like newer vehicles. Not only are they outrageously expensive, but the repairs are pricey and usually involve computer-driven failures such as sensors or chips rather than mufflers or transmissions. Nor do we like the “spy” technology being programmed into so many vehicles these days. That’s why we cling to our beaters and drive them ’til they drop.

So our strategy at the moment is to keep our old truck repaired enough to use, while in the meanwhile saving what we can for the inevitable day when we’ll have to purchase a new (used) vehicle.

As a secondary note, when I was thiiiis far pregnant with Younger Daughter (literally two weeks before she was born), Don and I went car shopping for a vehicle that would accommodate child car seats (up until that point, we both owned pickup  trucks). Understand this was back in 1998, and our monthly payments for our new (used) car was $100/month. To a couple of broke young parents, that was a lot of money … but what was worse was the principle we owed on the vehicle never seemed to go down. Finally we sold my pickup truck and paid off the car, and vowed we would never put ourselves in auto-loan debt ever again. Nor have we.

That’s why I found the above-linked article so interesting. Driving older vehicles just makes sense. Just ask our 1990 Ford F150 pickup.