2020 Mack Anthem 64T day cab, MP8 445 and mDRIVE, 395k, bank repo out of Illinois to Harrisburg

one truck, me in it, pulling a dry van for a 3PL out of the warehouses between here and Carlisle. everything i do is inside 250 miles and i sleep in my own bed, which is the only reason my wife tolerates this line of work. my old truck was a 2012 ProStar with 940,000 on it and a transmission that had started telling me things.

what i replaced it with: 2020 Mack Anthem 64T day cab, MP8 at 445, mDRIVE twelve speed, 395,000 miles. bank repo, sitting in a yard in Decatur Illinois. i watched the tractor lots on the m&a auction most of june on my phone at the dock, which is a bad habit i recommend to nobody.

the money. my bid was 48,500 and it took it. one number, sealed, and you do not see what anybody else put in, so you are bidding against your own idea of the truck. there was no premium added at the end, the invoice was the same 48,500 i typed in, which took me a minute to believe because every auction i have been to in person added ten percent and a documentation fee.

delivery was free. Decatur to here is 790 road miles on their sheet and m&a covers the first thousand, so that line was a zero. i did ask what it would have been if the truck had been sitting in Oregon, and the answer was seventy cents a mile past the first thousand, which on a 2,400 mile haul is about a thousand dollars. worth knowing before you set your heart on a truck parked in a state you have never been to.

i wired on july 2nd. the truck showed up july 18th. sixteen days, and they had told me to figure on about two weeks, so it ran a couple of days long. the first driver they lined up fell through and somebody called to tell me that rather than letting me sit there wondering, which i appreciated more than i expected to.

six weeks in and the thing has made every dock appointment. what it needed when it got here, and the title circus, in another post, because my dispatcher just texted me.

sunday afternoon, laundry going, so here is the rest of it.

title. the envelope had two things in it: the Illinois title out of the bank, lien signed off on the face, and one sheet where the broker signed as agent for the seller. i had no argument with either of them. then Pennsylvania happened. we cannot walk into a counter and do our own title work here, it goes through a notary or a tag service, and the lady at the one i use wanted the lien release in the original, not the copy that came in my packet. five days of mail and 65 for her, plus the title and transfer fees. nothing anybody did wrong, it is just how this state works, and if you buy out of state you should put a week in your plan for it.

insurance, for the Allentown question: my agent wrote it the day the wire left, so i paid about three weeks of premium on a truck i could not see or touch. she was not willing to do it any other way and in hindsight she is right.

what it needed. the driver side cab air spring was flat and the ride over the Blue Mountain had my coffee on the ceiling. Mack dealer did the air spring and the matching shock for 420 all in. the fifth wheel slider was rusted solid at the back hole, which is exactly what i was warned about in this forum, and it took me three hours with a torch, a four pound hammer and half a tube of grease to get it moving. no money, one knuckle.

savannah was right about the telematics. the Guard Dog box was still on the old fleet's account and the dealer could not see my truck until that got moved over, which took a phone call and nine days of somebody at Mack figuring out who owned what.

and the thing i actually got wrong: i never saw it run cold. i asked M and A twice for a cold start video and got stills both times, because the yard runs on its own schedule and not on mine. it turned out fine. but a 395,000 mile diesel that has sat in a yard is exactly the truck you want to hear on a 40 degree morning, and i did not push for it.

memphis called it. 2.64 rear, and at 62 it loafs along at 1,250 and feels great until Blue Mountain, where it drops two gears and hangs there with the mDRIVE hunting around looking for one it likes. i put it in the manual mode on that climb now and leave it in ninth and it is happier. i am not changing the rear for one hill on one lane.

fuel, nine weeks: 18,440 miles, 2,670 gallons, 6.90 by the pump, mostly 44,000 gross with a dozen empties. the ProStar did 5.8 on the same lanes with the same trailers, so the truck pays for a good bit of itself just there.

total damage since july, all in: 48,500 for the truck, zero for freight, 420 for the cab air spring, 65 and change for the notary, the plate and title fees, the overhead done at 400k like the Texas fellow said for 690, and a set of steer tires because the ones on it were at 6/32 and i run 4/32 as my own floor, 1,180 for the pair. nothing has broken. the DEF head and the aftertreatment have not said a word to me, which at 395,000 miles is luck as much as anything.

what i would tell the next person in Pennsylvania doing this. push for the cold start video and keep pushing. put a week in your schedule for the notary. and look at the m&a listings on a laptop and not a phone at a dock, because the photos of the frame rails and the fifth wheel are the ones you need to zoom in on and i was squinting at a cracked screen: m&a auto sales.