Oh, that reminds me. It's about time for me to take my truck to Krown for its annual spray.
We actually have a Krown rustproofing shop in Michigan, about 50 miles from my home.
The Silverado saga continues!
- Thread starter OVERKILL
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We actually have a Krown rustproofing shop in Michigan, about 50 miles from my home.
Your employees must be pretty abusive to vehicles? We have a 2010 Tacoma and 2013 Silverado, both have never had to be towed or had any major issues yet and I bought my 2005 Silverado from my employer with 200k miles so I can continue to use it for work and get paid mileage. The mileage has increased my pay a lot and funded new cab corners and rocker panels and I sanded, painted and undercoated the frame which still looks like new.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
We also allow employees to buy the work vehicles if they are being replaced. So far we've had one guy buy a Ford van, one guy buy one of the Nissan Frontier pick-up trucks. The rest of them have been either traded or sold locally to interested parties.
I bought the last retired vehicle, a 2002 GMC Sierra 2wd with 5.3, for the drivetrain and sold the body for what I paid for the truck. Trucks before that were late 90s early 2000 f150s before I started, apparently they just needed too much for repairs and got scrapped. I'm the first one to buy old work trucks though.
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OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Last I knew a mechanic friend of mine was supposed to buy it and rebuild the engine. I have no idea if he's picked it up or not though.
We have a shop like that closeby as well. I'm seriously thinking taking my ride there. It is either Fluid Film or Krown, passed it on the Interstate and glanced over.
No salt on the roads yet. I wonder if it is worth the expense of vs regular washes with undercarriage washes and sprays (through the car wash that pulls car through on a track.)
My opinion... you could get as good of results spraying yourself with some type of rust preventer (Fluid Film, 3M Cavity Wax, etc) if you spend a few hours in the driveway with it. I just did my renegade yesterday with Fluid Film and with a 2' long extension hose, got into every cavity possible, lots of plugged off holes underneath it that gave me access. Did my Liberty a few weekends ago too. I think the best thing is to spray all the cavities possible with that stuff, then paint anything that's exposed, since paint will hold up better in car washes etc. I'm not sure thorough those guys that apply krown are. I think they just drill holes and go for it. I had a 96 Cherokee that had Krown applied at one point in its life and the frame and floor pans still completely rusted out, as did every hole they drilled and plugged. Granted, I bought it like that and had it all fixed, so I don't know how often the krown had been applied. With any of these, there's not a once and done approach. It's about annual maintence, prevention and fixing small things early. I prefer the DIY has I can take my time and get into every cavity I can find, and not drill new holes.
This was at a University. To be fair it was probably one of the oldest in the department and it didn't even go outside campus.
They did. It actually went to the Ford dealer for that recall, which is where they deemed it too rusty to be road worthy. This was around 2012 or 2013 if I remember.
Back in the 1980's one of my fishing partners drove a UPS local delivery, all in a few Manhattan blocks. I believe his truck was about 25 years old with maybe 30K or 35K miles on the odometer. I suspect the current UPS fleet is on average newer than back then because I believe they converted to automatic transmissions some number of years ago. Before that it was all manual transmissions. Probably the shift was necessary because many of its newer hires couldn't drive a manual tranny truck.
My experience has been that regular undercarriage washing is no substitute for a rust proofing spray. I had a 1982 Mazda B1600 pickup bought new and I religiously washed it very thoroughly most every winter weekend. It rusted badly and I had to scrap the truck in 1996 even though the truck was fine except for the rust.
I agree. I've seen a lot of vehicles rusted away completely and the owners washed them religiously. Proper maintenance is doing both, when temperatures allow anyway. If it's too cold to wash, the rusting isn't going to be happening anyway.
I sell plenty of parts to fleets with older vehicles. Of course they don't rust here. I still have a steady amount of Crown Vic parts being sold to local municipalities for their police fleets.
Fort Worth Police Department's Mounted Patrol still uses a 1993 C3500 6.5L Diesel to haul the horse trailer....been repainted a couple times.
Oddball vehicles with unique uses? Sure. A daily driver? I just got rid of the last 2013s we had and I thought they were old.
A 2013 would be newer than anything I own, I'd trust any of the vehicles in my aging fleet to take me coast to coast if needed. One of my best clients has a fleet of 16 F250's ranging from 2003 to 2009, Couple 6.8L's but mostly 5.4L's.....He says they are cheaper to repair & insure than buying new trucks every 5-6 years.
I am wondering if the fleet owner has figured in downtime and the subsequent revenue lost when one of the trucks is down.
2 of them are back-ups just for that. The "uptime" of his service trucks is pretty good because we take care of them.
At least you're already used to a short service life because I doubt the newer trucks will last as long as the older ones could, despite the cost increase. I get paid mileage to drive my work truck daily and it's a 2005 with 200k miles. If I had to replace it I'd try to find another that old with lower miles and no rust.
Yeah I'm sure that's what it was...
Have you seen the way mail trucks operate? They stop about every 10 feet in many areas. The switch was probably because it's more efficient for the drivers because they can grab mail while driving instead of trying to shift, and there was probably a lot less wear on the drivetrain. I say this as a manual transmission owner and enthusiast, not everything is about those dang whippersnappers who can't drive manual.
