HOLY COW! I am officially a truck owner! Now what do I do? Lol! Well the first thing on our agenda was to have a mechanic check it out (since we didn't have it done before buying it like my Husband told me to do!). We did realize on the way home that the windshield wipers didn't work so right off the bat...something needed fixed so my Husband got to tell me "I Told You So". I hope he felt better about himself because it's very rare that he is right about something. I'm usually the one that's always right! ;) Who would have thought to check those out right away? It was summertime! Anyway, a couple of days after we got it home, we took it to the mechanic and it came back $300 and a week later with a clean bill of health and a new windshield wiper motor. Larry & I (mostly Larry), started removing the wood and railing inside the box to expose the bare walls so we could check it all out and get it all cleaned up. My kitties enjoyed playing inside the truck too. I started searching for a metal fabricator to remove the lift gate and roll-up door and create a custom door frame and stairs. I contacted 8 different fabricators within the first couple of weeks and only ONE of them even responded to me! What...doesn't ANYONE need a job anymore? This is a paying gig here and NOBODY seems to want to get paid! The ONE guy that contacted me came back with a quote of $3,300 to do this ONE part of the project! Uh...no way! There is NO WAY it is THAT expensive to create what I wanted! I've seen this on another fashion truck and she didn't pay that much, so why is it so expensive for me? Besides the fact that that was like 1/2 my budget for the entire thing! So I continued to try to find other fabricator to give me another quote and still nothing! I decided to shift gears and get quotes to either paint or wrap the truck. Maybe if I just gave it a little more time, a fabricator would get back to me. Well...at that point I was getting pretty deflated. I was getting quotes for $5,000 to paint the truck and upwards of $7,000 to wrap it! What was going on here?! I am a part of a Fashion Truck FB group and other ladies had gotten their trucks done for a FRACTION of that! I swear...Oregonians inflate their cost of service 10-fold! Good grief! How on earth was I gonna get this truck going if it's gonna cost this much to modify it? Things were looking pretty grim... We had lots of wood to remove on the inside...with kitty's help of course. We also bought the new flooring for it. While it was at the mechanics, we had them also fix the hole on the side of the truck. Just a few cosmetic things to fix. ;)
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After many months of convincing (or so I thought), I got my Husband to agree to go with me to look at a couple of box trucks for sale. They were about 2 hours away from our house so I was surprised he even agreed to go. They were a little more expensive than we wanted to spend, but in our area, this type of truck is not ripe for the choosing so people can get away with asking more for them. Go to the East Coast and they are a dime a dozen! I could get a great truck for cheap if I was in Florida! Lol! It was a Saturday afternoon, and we had 2 trucks to look at in that area. I was excited to finally be seeing one in person. It gave me a glimmer of hope that this could actually happen. Could one of these trucks be THE one? We stopped to look at the first truck, and it.was.rough. The inside of the cab was torn up, the box was dirty and gross inside and the guy really didn't know much about the truck. It was an easy pass, although my shot at one of these 2 trucks being 'the one" just got cut in half. We preceded to the car lot where the other truck was (the 1st one was a private owner). After the sales guy finally figured out which truck it was we were there to see, he found it on the lot. It was wedged between a metal fence and a building with building materials piled behind it and a very TIGHT squeeze to pull it out going forward. I'm not sure how they even got the truck wedged into that space to begin with! It was insane trying to get it out! After some very hairy maneuvering, he finally got it pulled out so we could test drive it. Now the fun begins! I have never driven a truck this size and I was terrified! I drove it in the parking lot, but I had Larry drive it on the road first. We went down the road and found a place to turn around (mind you, you can't just pull into any old space to turn around). We had to go far enough to find a large parking lot to pull into. I decided I was going to try to drive it back. It was terrifying and exciting all at the same time. Driving with traffic around is nerve wracking, but I managed to do it. And we got back in one piece! We pulled back into the lot and looked the truck over. I really liked it! It was very clean inside, it was a box truck like I wanted, and the price was right. Larry and I talked it over but we still wanted to have it checked out by a mechanic. However...it was a Saturday and where would we find one to do that on a weekend, 2 hours away from our home? Remember when I said I don't give up? Well...we just bought a truck! Larry wasn't very happy with me because I didn't wait to have it checked out, but it ran strong, it was in good shape and when on earth would we have time together to drive back 2 hours away to do all this again...with a mechanic in tow? We wouldn't. And I knew it. If we didn't buy it then, we wouldn't buy it ever. So we bought it! And here she is! We ended up buying the second truck we looked at!! This was the first truck we looked at. We passed it up because it needed WAY too much work.
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AuthorMy name is Colleen and I am a Paparazzi Accessories Independent Consultant. I am an entrepreneur at heart and I'm ready to take my Paparazzi Business MOBILE! I will be bringing the Paparazzi Party to YOU! Archives
August 2018
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