2021 Silverado 1500 Trail Boss 5.3, i took the Buy Now price instead of bidding

different flavor of buying report than dan's, because mine started with a wreck and a deadline instead of a plan.

i am a field service tech for a pump company. caliche lease roads, cattle guards, forty to sixty thousand miles a year, and about nine months of the year it is over 95 degrees by noon. on a friday in June a kid in a Corolla rear ended my 2016 Silverado at a light on 42nd Street and the adjuster called it totaled. 17,400 dollars and a rental car for ten days, which was generous of them, and a problem, because without a four wheel drive truck i do not work.

so i went looking at everything that could be in my driveway inside two weeks. the dealers in Midland and Odessa in June wanted 39 to 42 thousand for a 2021 Trail Boss with 40 to 50 thousand miles, and the two i drove had both lived their whole lives out here, which you can tell by the paint on the hood.

what i ended up buying was a 2021 Silverado 1500 LT Trail Boss, 5.3 and the 8 speed, crew cab, 5 foot 8 box, 47,800 miles, sitting at a lender yard in Tulsa. it is a bank repossession and M&A Auto Sales is the broker on it, they do not own it, the lender does, and the truck never moves off that lender's lot until somebody buys it.

here is the part i want to put in front of this board, because dan's thread is all about sealed bidding and i did not bid at all. some of the lots carry a Buy Now price. that one did. 34,750 and the truck is yours, no bidding, no close date, no waiting to find out. i read the listing on a tuesday night, called in the morning with questions about the skid plates and the service records, and took the Buy Now number that afternoon.

i did it because i had nine days left on a rental car, not because i am a clever shopper, and i will get into whether that cost me money below. the whole lot with 61 photos is the kind of thing you can see on the m&a listing pages if you have never looked at how these are written up.

612 road miles from Tulsa to my house, so the delivery line was zero. truck showed up 11 days after the wire cleared.

ram_hemi_guy wroteyou paid two or three thousand dollars for a calendar.

no argument. i paid for a calendar. put it in the record: the Buy Now number is not negotiable, i asked, politely, twice, and the answer both times was that the number is the number. you can bid under it on the lots that are open for bidding, and then you are waiting on a close date and you might lose, which is the whole thing i could not do with a rental car running out.

to dan's question, yes, photographs came the same as for you. i asked for the front and rear skid plates, under the rear bumper where the spare hangs, and the top of the bed rails, and i had nine new pictures by the end of that day. the Buy Now price does not mean you take it sight unseen with no questions, it just means nobody else can take it out from under you while you are looking.

numbers, since that is the rule on this board.

34,750 for the truck, and there is no buyer's premium line anywhere on the m&a invoice, the number i agreed to is the number i wired. delivery zero. the Ector County tax office took 2,171.88 in motor vehicle sales tax at 6 and a quarter percent, 33 dollars for the title application and 80.50 for the plates.

then the tires, which is where this truck got expensive. the listing photos showed the tread on all four and i looked at them and did not look hard enough. two were the factory Duratracs with maybe 6 32nds, and the other two were a brand i had never heard of in the right size, and one of those had a plug in the shoulder, which is not a place you plug a tire. 1,312 dollars for four Goodyear Wrangler Duratracs in 275/65R18 at a shop on 42nd Street, mounted and balanced. one TPMS sensor was dead when they broke it down and that was another 62.

all in i am at 38,409 and change. a dealer truck out here was 39 to 42 plus tax on top of that, so the spread is real but it is not the three thousand dollar win people imagine when they hear auction. and i am the one who has to drive on those tires for the next four years, so i do not count the tire money as a loss, i count it as something i should have seen in the photographs.

one more honest note. the 30 day window where you get your money back if the truck was materially misrepresented would not help me on the tires and should not. they were photographed. i had the pictures. i am the one who skimmed them.

on the handoff. open trailer, three trucks on it, driver out of Lubbock. he dropped mine last so i watched the other two come off first, which was an education. i walked it with my phone out for about ten minutes while he waited, photographed all four corners, the glass, the bed and the odometer. he had a delivery sheet and he wanted a signature saying the truck came off the truck in the condition it is in, which is what he is actually responsible for. odometer read 47,841 against 47,800 in the listing photo, which is yard moves and loading, and i would not have signed if it said 49,000.

the thing nobody tells you: the driver is not the seller. he cannot fix anything, authorize anything or argue about anything, so do not waste his time on a problem he did not cause. take the pictures, sign for transport damage or the lack of it, and put anything else in an email that night.

six week report. 3,100 miles of lease road and 96 degree afternoons. the new Duratracs are quiet for what they are and the truck does not care what the road looks like. it burns a little oil, maybe a third of a quart in 3,000 miles, which rob tells me is normal for a 5.3 with that mileage and which i am going to keep an eye on anyway. the 2 inch factory lift means my old bedliner from the 2016 does not sit level in the back, which is a complaint about my own junk and not the truck.

what i would do differently with another month to shop: bid instead of buying, obviously. and i would have asked for photographs of the tire sidewalls up close and not just the tread, because the sidewall is where the date codes and the plug were, and that was 1,374 dollars i could have known about before i wired anything.