New Bike Transporter

For the last seven years, I have been hauling my bikes, family, trail maintenance tools, and lumber around in my Toyota mini-van. When the load was too much for the van, I added an AirLift 1000 kit by AirLift to the suspension to help resist suspension sag. When the air bag sprung a leak, I purchased custom coils for the rear shocks. When space got tight, I hauled a trailer to add more room.



The van was starting to show its age and getting a little worse for wear due to pulling the heavy trailer up and down mountains the last two summers. It was time for a new vehicle. This time, I had one primary criteria - the vehicle had to pass the 4x8 plywood test. This ruled out 90% of the vehicles on the market. My final list consisted of the Ford F-150 SuperCrew, Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey. After all the suspension mods in the last van, I decided it was time for a truck. Introducing my new ride for the next 60 months:



I learned a few things from my purchase experience and I thought I'd share them here.

1. Buy on the last day of the month - dealers are hungry for a sale to increase their monthly totals (Ford even gave more incentives for Monday, Feb 28th - the day I bought my truck).


2. Selling your old car yourself does give you the most money for your vehicle, but that can be time consuming and, honestly, a pain in the a$$ sometimes. Trade-ins do help the bargaining process because it gives the dealer some wiggle room when it comes time to compute final numbers. Know ahead of time time the Kelly Blue Book and Edmunds value of your car. The more you know when you walk in the dealership, the better.


3. Know how much you want your monthly payment to be. Tell them what you are going to put down in cash and then say, "if you can make these numbers work, I'll buy the car". That's what saved me. I told them I want my payments at $XYZ per month and they went off and made the numbers work. They took a little off the price of the truck (under invoice) and jacked up the price of my trade in. Final offer from them was exactly what I told them I wanted it to be. To be honest, I was quite aggressive with my request, but I was also ready to walk out and shop again another day. It was the afternoon of the last day of a slow selling month. They worked hard to meet my numbers.


4. There's a 3% sales tax in my state, so include that in your budget.


5. Know ahead of time if you want:
   
   • extended maintenance plan (~$1000)
   
   
   • extended bumper-to-bumper warranty (~$1000)
   
   
   • GAP insurance (~$400)
   
   
   
   The finance guy will drive a hard sell to include those packages. If you finance these, your final monthly payment will change.


6. Pay $8 for your Equifax credit score before you start shopping. That will tell you whether you'll qualify for the good rates (like 0% financing or other financing deals).


7. Look at BankRate.com to find out what the going rates for auto loans are. Recently, no one has been able to come close to BankOfAmerica online. I called them and got pre-approved for a very good rate. In the back room of the dealership, the finance guy was able to beat that by 0.2%, but it gave me a starting point for calculating my monthly costs before I started haggling with the dealer.


8. Bonus tip - I downloaded a few "car loan" and "simple loan" apps on my Android Smartphone. When the dealer came back with an offer, I just plugged the numbers in my phone and showed him that it wasn't going to work out. This was very useful for the negotiation process.

So there you have it. My top tips for buying a new bike hauler. Drive safe and honk if you ride bikes.