High mileage truck stories

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Originally Posted by 92saturnsl2
When I was just out of high school, I started work with a local steel fabricator around year 2000. The shop delivery truck was a 1990 GMC 1500 4x4, auto with 5.7L engine. I filled in as a backup driver when they needed one and made deliveries with it semi-frequently.

Being a lot younger, I used to do stupid stuff to vehicles for no good reason. Made more deliveries than I can count in 4-LO the whole way just for grins, the tach bouncing off the limiter almost the whole way (about 40mph max). Plenty of self-shifting through 1-2-D hitting redline with every shift, no particular reason why. Anything dumb I could think of doing, I did it to this poor truck.

The trans had been replaced around 2007, about the time I left the company. Had 200k miles then. I went back to work there for a few months in 2014, they still had the truck, it was up to 300k, original engine. An employee purchased the truck in 2015, drove it as a personal vehicle. A couple months ago, a buddy of mine spotted it in a Home Depot parking lot, sent me a pic of it. So it's still on the road. The condition is rough enough (it looked like [censored] in 2007!), I doubt anyone wound spend the money to put a new engine in it, so I suspect it's still the original.



Haha! That's pretty cool. Right out of high school I worked for firestone for a few months...they had this old Ford ranger 5spd pickup...I used to beat the tar out of it picking up tires and stuff. That thing was absolutely beat to [censored], I think it had a couple hundred thousand rough rough miles on it.

Then I left firestone and went to work for a dealership. There was this seemless gutter company that used to get their fleet serviced at my dealer. These things were atrocious...they'd come in ticking because they were driving around three quarts low. And they'd never get anything fixed, I don't even know why they bothered getting their trucks fixed at the dealer. The trucks were these old 1988 chevy box trucks with the 5.7 in them. The guy who owned that company had to be making a fortune, while I was working on them they'd be out in the parking lot forming these gutters for their next house...they couldn't even wait for me to put a set of tires on the thing, it was just too much of a waste of time for them. I can't tell you how many times the service manager would come back and tell me to finish up, these guys needed to hit the road. And they didn't want to lose their business so half the time these trucks would be going out the door with probably less oil in them than when they came in.
 
My brother had a 1991Chevrolet c1500 that he drove from 2007-2016. He sold it with 302,000 miles. Drivetrain was a 4.3l manual transmission. He sold it for $600 running well enough to still be a daily driver! Most major repair was head gaskets from a blown radiator hose that over heated the truck in 2007. Original parts still on truck when sold were rear end, trans, engine, power steering pump and box, distributor, tbi, timing chain, heater core, ac compressor.
He could of driven it longer but the truck was starting to look crusty and no longer presentable for his job. A lot of the pickup trucks out there are very durable!
 
All 3 of my trucks (02 Ranger, 94 Explorer & Ranger) have over 200K, and two are more than a quarter century old, so I guess that counts. Drove all 3 today. All 3 appear to have original engine/trans/axles, I know for sure the 02 does. Both 94s were severely neglected by previous owners.

We have several high mileage GMT800s at work. We don't put engines in them, bad engine = scrap.. highest mileage is in the 550k range on an 04 5.3. Most have had a trans, but we have gotten close to 500k on more than one 4L60E. 2 or 3 rear ends replaced. Light loads and easy driving for the most part, but a lot of it.
 
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