Bigdog wrote:
It turned out that a lot of the problems were caused by the driver and the way he treated the truck.
It's amazing how many people fail to give this the weight that it deserves. I have a buddy who does a lot of fleet service work for contractors and service providers. He was approached by the owner of a large exterminating company who was troubled by issues with his trucks, and hoping to get an answer as to which brand would give him better reliability? The owner got an answer he would of never thought of. MY buddy told him to start matching the drivers to the repair history of the fleet, and warned him that he might end up firing one or two once he saw the data.
I once bought a used van for my company, since it was in extremely nice condition and too cheap to pass up. It came from a dealer who only sold light commercial trucks. He told me that, within reason, mileage isn't something to focus on. His point was that he has seen operators who could nearly destroy a van in 30K miles, and others who could turn a van in with 180K that ran and drove nearly new.