Mover's Guide to Buying Moving Trucks

Hey, my friend. It's Luis Massaro, CEO of Moving Mastery and founder of Moving Sales Academy. I want to welcome you to this week's episode. I've been getting a lot of emails and comments lately about buying new trucks and my opinion on what type of trucks people should buy. And I just wanted to address it because it's not a one size fits all answer, right? Depending on where you are with your company, depending on the size of your company, depending on your, you know, accounting situation and whether you're, you know, gonna buy, whether you're gonna financ, whether you want to lease a truck, there's many options. So I wanted to give you a few of those options and go over what my suggestions and recommendations are. Okay. So, you know, when I was opening up new locations, I always started with two trucks in each location, right. And then grew it from there. And each time I bought brand new trucks, I financed them. I didn't pay cash for very expensive trucks, but I financed them and put two trucks to start in each location. And I prefer to buy brand new trucks when I need a truck when I'm opening new locations. So I've never bought used trucks, but I've worked with many people who have and I just want to go over the different options. All right, so first thing, first option is a brand new truck. All right? This would be my recommendation today. If you have the ability to buy a brand new truck, I would go with a Freightliner M2 with a 26 foot Kentucky moving body on there, all right. Which is a non CDL truck. So 26,000 GVW's gross vehicle weight. That basically allows you to have a standard driver in that truck that does not need a cdl. Okay. This is such a beautiful, beautiful truck. All right. This is essentially what I bought for my company. Early on. We were buying internationals, we were putting am hair boxes on them. This is what I would get today. This is a Freightliner M2 Kentucky, 26 foot brand new moving body. You know, if you've ever bought a brand new moving box and it arrives because you have to order them in advance, they're not just sitting around, right? So if you do want to get a new moving body, if you do want to get a new truck, start preparing in September, October and November to make sure that you have it for next moving season. All right? But if, when you get that truck and you open up the back and you see those wood floors and you smell that oak and the polyurethane, it's just a beautiful thing A brand new moving truck, right? And it'll last you 10 years. So a truck like this is going to run you about $95,000, all right? If you finance it, you're probably looking about $1,500 a month. All right? That does not include insurance. You can get extended warranties on them. So, you know, look into buying a brand new moving truck. I'm going to put some resources in the show notes below so that you can reach out and use who I buy my trucks from and you know, definitely look into it. All right. Now if 95,000 is too steep of a price tag, I understand. All right. The next option is a new used combo. All right? A new used combo. So what this is is this is a used chassis, all right? So that the truck itself is used about 150 to 200,000 miles. And then there's a brand new moving body on it. All right? So I'm going to give you some resources to find this as well. There's not many people that do this, but I'm going to share with you my resource and my connection for finding this truck. And you know, essentially what they do is they'll take a Kenworth truck or a Hino truck that's off lease again about 150 to 200,000 miles and then they'll put a brand new all van moving body on there. Again, brand new with the attic 26 foot, 26,000 GV VW non CDL truck. Alright? This truck's gonna run you about 65,000. So if you finance this, you're probably looking somewhere in the range of about twelve hundred dollars a month. All right? So if you don't want to go brand new, you could do a new used combo, which still gives you that new look of having a brand new moving body, which is really important when you're starting to build a brand and your image and that billboard running around town. It looks really nice to have a new moving body body. All right? Third option is, you know, straight up used trucks, right? So new trucks, too much money. The combo is too much money. And you want to go for a used truck. What you want to do is you want to look for a non CDL, all right, 26,000 GVW. So max 26,000 gross vehicle weight. That will allow you to be a non CDL truck. All right. You want an automatic transmission, all right. If you can find automatic transmission, it's going to be much better. All right. For any of you that have a manual transmission or have dealt with manual transmissions, at your company. You know, that's what I bought in my first few years in business and we burned through a bunch of clutches. All right, Drivers will come in and they'll just burn. They don't know how to drive the truck properly and they're just going to burn through your clutch and you're just going to be spending money after money after money. So it's better to spend the money to get an automatic truck up front. And this way there's not as much skill needed to drive that truck. All right, make sure that when you're buying a used truck, there's maintenance records to show that they've been keeping that truck maintenanced over the course of time, that they've had it, that They've had regular PMs preventative maintenance on the truck and they should have the record showing that. And you also want a 24 to 26 foot truck. All right, if you're going to buy a truck, don't spend the money to get a 20 footer or you know, 15 footer. It's about the same amount of fuel to run a 24 or 26 foot truck and it just gives you more ability to do larger moves. All right, and make sure you get a non refrigerated truck. All right. If you don't, you know, if you're looking for used trucks and you're not quite sure what to look for, these are the things that you want to make sure that it has. All right, a non refrigerated truck or reefer truck as they call it has essentially a cooling system in it. You have don't want that, you don't need that, you don't want to pay for it. All right, so that's going with a used truck. I'm also going to put some links below where you can find some used trucks. Right. Used movingvans.com is a great, great source for finding used trucks. Used trucks that were specifically from a moving company. So they have the moving box on them. And then there's also, you know, off lease trucks that you can get from, you know, rider Penske Budget. But I would stick with going to use movingvans.com and start there if you're going to be buying a used truck. All right, fourth option, if you don't want to buy a brand new truck, if you don't want to buy a combo new used, right. So you have a used chassis and a brand new body. And your third option is to buy a used truck is to do a full maintenance lease. Right. Ryder And Penske offer these, amongst other companies to where you can get a brand new truck. They'll lease it to you and it's full maintenance, meaning they'll take care of everything. Again, it has to do with the plan that you set up with them during the lease. So check with them as to what the details are and what's offered. But you know, if the truck breaks down, they'll give you another truck to use. This is a great option, especially talk to your accountant if you need the full write off on a lease. You know, when you buy a truck, you don't write off the whole payment, alright? So that could be a very steep payment to not get the write off. Although it goes on your balance sheet, a lease is a complete write off. All right, so these are the four options. And listen, if you're in it for the long haul, right? If you're in this business and you're building a brand and you're building a company, don't be afraid to spend money on your trucks. Just make sure that you service them, make sure you take care of them. Make sure they're clean, right? Because you could have a brand new moving truck that you never clean, you never wash, and it looks like crap, right? And that's what people see when it's rolling around town. So make sure you're doing preventive maintenance on the trucks every 6,000 miles. Make sure you're sending them in for a regular pm. Make sure you're washing them on a regular basis, right? And make sure you letter it up, all right? Put your logo on the side. Make sure people see it coming. If you get a brand new truck, if you get a brand new box or even a good looking used truck, you want to make sure that it's representing your company, right? So listen, guys, I hope this was helpful. I'm getting this information and I'm doing these episodes based off the comments I'm receiving, based off the emails that you're sending me. So if you have any questions, if there's anything I could help you with, please send me an email. Leave a comment, I'll be more than happy to get back to you. I know it's moving season. I hope you're busy. I hope you're out there crushing it. I hope you're thinking about buying some new trucks because you're that busy. I can tell you if you're going to buy new, if you're going to buy a new used combo, all right, Plan in advance, all right? It takes months to build these new moving Boxes. All right, I made the mistake. Many years where March comes around, I'm like, oh man, I need new trucks and I don't get them until the end of season. All right, so it's something that I want you to start thinking about now for next year. And I'm gonna put some resources, reach out to the, you know, the truck dealers, talk to them, see what the deal is, see what works for you, see what financing options there are. And you know what, keep building, keep growing, go out every day. Profit in business, thrive in life. I'll see you next week. Hey, my friend, it's Louis. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you want to build a rock solid sal process in your moving company and continue to book moves on a regular basis and just increase sales, what I'd love to do is teach you the six stages of building a moving sales machine in your company. Alright? These are the same six stages that I use to build my company to a multi million dollar nationwide level where we were booking 12,000 moves a year or $20 million in business. And I'd love to train you for free on how to do that in your company. Alright? So simply click on the link on this page or head over to Louis Massaro dot six stages. So that's Louis L O U I s Massaro M a s s a r-o.com six stages. And you'll get instant access and meet me back here and we're going to walk through the six stages of how to build a moving sales machine in your company. All right? So until I see you on the other side, until I see you back here for the free training, go out there every single day and profit in business and thrive in life. I'll see you later.