If you own land you have to own a truck. There’s really no way around it. I think it is mandatory in Saskatchewan that if you want to be considered part of the rural community you simply must own a truck. Plus we only owned one small city vehicle, which I had already destroyed on one previous trip out to the land.
…..Ok so I was a little excited to go out to the land and might have been driving a bit too fast for a gravel road with some low spots in it. Sue me. I hit a particularly soft spot in the road and tore the underside of our bumper off… Although I didn’t realize it until after I’d gotten back onto the highway and heard a loud crash. I’d thought I’d blown a tire but in fact my bumper was just dragging on the pavement. Anyways bottom line was we needed a truck. Our credibility as farmers depended on it.
Kijiji seemed like the most logical direction. Initially I was looking to spend no more than $1500. But pretty much all there was were a bunch of rusted, multi colored trucks with 400,000 kms on them. After talking to real live farmer (my wife’s cousin) he told us that we needed to be serious and get a decent truck, a Chevy or GMC, from the late 1990s or early 2000s. Yessir.
Prices were between $4000 and $5500. We probably looked at a dozen trucks- most were terrible. It’s hilarious how people write about their junk on kijiji. We thought we’d found the perfect truck: black, Chevy silverado 2003, reasonable mileage, loaded. The ad pretty much made it sound like a rare gem. When we went to look it, the seat was torn open with foam hanging out, the tires were totally bald, none of the dashboard lights were operational and you had to find the “sweet spot” by jiggling the keys like a madman to get it to start. But other than that it was perfect.
We found another one out in Warman that was actually real nice. Good shape, good mileage and appeared to be well taken care of. The seller’s cousin met us and let us take it for a test drive. Drove good. $4900 seemed reasonable. We called the seller and told him we’d take it. Darcie said for $4500. She drives a hard bargain – “first one to say something loses” is her bartering motto.
Guy said “ok I guess.”
Sweet we’ll meet you there tomorrow to pick it up. Darcie called me the next day and said that she called the guy to get his name for a bank draft and all he would consider taking was cash…… Umm do you understand what a bank draft is? It is cash. Guaranteed to you. Nope not good enough for this guy. So Darcie and I made a last minute dash for the cash, and came up with the money in time to meet the guy at 6:30 like he had asked. Oh and he said we had to be there by 6:30 because he had someone else interested in the truck and was going to meet hime at 7:00 with cash in hand…. Bastard!
I arrived in Warman at 6:20 ready to make the transaction and drive away with our truck, however buddy was nowhere to be found. Darcie texted him and he said “sorry I’m stuck in traffic. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Well a few minutes came and went. I’m not sure what kind or “traffic” jams they get in small town Warman but this was certainly the worst in Saskatchewan’s history. After 30 minutes of waiting I was getting pretty frustrated. But thought I might as well wait because he had someone else apparently coming at 7:00. I was standing beside the truck anyway.
Well 7:00 came and went too. Then 7:15. Guy texted and said “sorry traffic is really bad. I’m on my way.” Sure. You know if you don’t want to sell us the truck that’s fine, just don’t waste my time. After an hour of getting more and more angry I left. I’m not sure if this guy was playing us for fools or what, but the next morning the guy texted and said he would bring the truck in for us and that he was really sorry…..surprise surprise, that never happened either. We just got screwed by Kijiji.
Fortunately a couple days later this Burgundy beaut came up…..burgundy with brown rust colored highlights around the rear wheel wells, decent mileage but a bit over priced, but whatevs let’s go check it out. We drove the beast and everything looked good. The seller was not a moron either. Just a nice middle aged man named Neal.
I told him we liked it, but the price was a bit high. I told him I had $4500 in my pocket.
SOLD!
Now we are getting legit!
-K
(Originally posted July 10, 2014)
Blue Heron EcoHaus 