Originally Posted By: horse123
Let's say you had $10,000 to buy a used truck. You need it for work and personal use both for probably 5 or more years. Some day you're going to tow a 2 horse bumper pull trailer with it, and other than that you have to keep a LOT of tools and various smaller items in it most of the time. It'd be a daily driver. Needs to have cheap AND easy maintenance, be able to pull that 2 horse bumper pull without struggling, and be able to do it while climbing mountain roads once in a blue moon... I know that's hard to ask of any non-turbo truck, but it simply needs to be able to do that maybe 3 or 4 times a year. Obviously needs to be reliable.
Other than that... it needs to get me from one place to another.
What would you look for and why?
Oh forgot to add it also needs to be 4WD. 2WD is just not an option when you work on farms...
You got a few conflicting requests there. Daily driver + able to tow a two-horse traier without struggling means either a diesel or one of the big gas-hogs (6.4 Hemi, 6.2 Boss, etc.) If you're willing to over-spend on fuel for the daily drive part, then I'd go for one of those.
But realistically for all your requirements, I'd look at a mid-2000's Dodge/Cummins pre-DPF truck (first choice) or a GM Duramax (2nd choice) from around that same era. Fords of that era are a non-starter unless you want to spend as much as you paid for the truck with aftermarket fixes for the 6.0/6.4 diesels. All you really have to do with the Dodge is make sure the restrictive little check-valve is removed from the transmission cooler line if you have a 47RE (or H) trans. and your driveline is then bulletproof. If you get a truck late enough to have a 68RFE (2007 and later), then it comes pretty well bulletproof already, though it might need a solenoid pack every 150k or so. The Allison in the GM was OK after the mid/early 2000's, not exactly when they got the short injector life problems on the Duramax sorted out.
Finding any of the above in good condition for your 10K price might be a trick- you're sorta looking for an old creampuff to get in that range of price/reliability. Most of the diesels have been wrung out by the time the price drops that low, most of the gassers that can tow a load like that will be new enough to still be above your price. Even the smaller gassers hold value like crazy these days.
CAN you tow a two-horse trailer with a 5.4 Ford, 5.3 GM, or 5.7 Dodge gasser? Sure. But it'll be like when I tow with my 4.7... it'll be extra driver workload planning all your moves with the limited available power.