Forum Discussion

pressure_welder's avatar
Mar 10, 2019

Downsizing, sort of?

good afternoon everyone! hope you are doing well. First I guess a little bit of information on my current situation? if you want to call it that. Anyway right now my and wife and I own a 2015 RAM 3500 limited dually long box. Love the truck, it has severed us very well. Last year at the lake I was sitting in the lawn chair looking at it and just began to start to really contemplate the justification for it. While we do need a dually to haul our fifth wheel/boat combo to the lake I have been finding it increasingly more difficult to justify the 850$ a month. In reality it only gets used to its actual potential for 4 or 5 trips a year, equaling MAYBE 1000KM a year of pulling our rig to the lake. The rest of the year, while a gorgeous, comfortable truck hauls my to work, and is generally the goto vehicle for the 1200KM trip to the in-laws. But after owning it for almost 4 years its only got 68,000KM on it. Ontop of that we are building a new home at the local lake this summer so in doing that we will cut down our camping almost in half yet again with just having our annual 4 week holiday at our favorite lake.
SO I don't know if any of you have done this before... maybe I am crazy. But we have 4 years left on the loan of the 2015. I am debating on taking the equity we have in the 2015.... and looking at getting into a really clean 2007 to 2009 ram 3500 mega cab dually Laramie pkg with heated seats/steering wheel and driving a truck without a payment for a while. Any opinions on this? I have a 2007 ram 3500 SLT dually welding truck with the 5.9 which I do like, the interior of course dosent touch my 2015 but one cant expect it too.
what I am struggling with is finding weight towing capacities..... the specs of our fifth wheel is 14,270LBS loaded weight, with a pin weight of 2270LBS. Behind that we tow our 20 foot walleye boat weighing in at 3500LBS. All I have found thus far is charts saying a 2008-2009 mega cab dually is good for around 16,500LBS, but get difference answers from other sites. Ontop of that the previous owner of my 07 welding rig used to haul a 40 foot gooseneck with a 21,000GVWR that he regularily had maxed out.
I guess the question is can a mega cab dually with the 6.7 handle our rig which is 14,270 fifth wheel with 3500lb boat? my gut tells me yes it will. Plan is to go with the reese goosebox pinbox for the camper so as to have nothing but gooseneck couplers in my fleet. from what I can tell our montana high country has a nose cap that is made for short box trucks.


Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

40 Replies

  • Before you make your decision to go backwards in technology make sure you look at the problems with the front ends on the older trucks. They made a change sometime in 08 to help and I am sure other changes were made after that. I just put $2200 into my front end 2 weeks ago after experiencing the death wobble at 65 mph. Look up Dodge Ram 2500 death wobble on youtube and watch a few videos. I would not want to be hauling my 5th wheel when that happens. It happens on 3500's also.
  • pressure_welder wrote:
    No worries there on the equity, i have about 15,000$ Positive equity. While this won’t pay for the entire used truck will certainly pay for half. Then will just pay cash for remainder.

    To dig out of my car loan mess - I kept my car and kept my cash. Since I had essentially already paid most of the interest on the loan, I also kept the loan. When I finally paid off the loan I continued to pay myself by saving that monthly payment (I used payroll deduction at the time). When it was time for the next car/truck I had the cash I needed - no loan. I bought the new vehicle and continued to save a monthly payment for myself.

    After we retired, the DW was in an accident which totaled the car. The insurance payment was fair but to get back into the car market we needed additional cash, which we already had because we had been saving for it.

    Using this method, vehicles have been much cheaper because the bank was not involved. The lesson for me was - always use your own money, then you will automatically have more. Spend tomorrow's money today, then what will you be able to spend tomorrow?

    The magic for me was not in trading vehicles, the magic is in cash management. Start small and grow big. Good luck.
  • For me, with half the loan paid off and the unknowns of what you're going to get when you buy used, I'd stay with what you have.
  • schlep1967 wrote:
    Lantley wrote:

    Keeping what you have a long time is the best way to get full value out of any truck. Any other approach favors the bank

    I agree with what you are saying.....but somebody with a 2019 truck in their signature line, shouldn't be allowed to say it.:B

    I get it. But my last truck was an 07 that had 300K on it when I traded.
    I plan on this 2019 one going 300K as well. The best way to absorb/endure that initial cost is to keep it for a very long time!
  • Lantley wrote:

    Keeping what you have a long time is the best way to get full value out of any truck. Any other approach favors the bank

    I agree with what you are saying.....but somebody with a 2019 truck in their signature line, shouldn't be allowed to say it.:B
  • Your plan sounds nice on paper,but financially I really don't see any savings.
    Trucks don't appreciate. Paying off loans,registration fees,will all add up and erode any so called equity.
    Keeping what you have a long time is the best way to get full value out of any truck. Any other approach favors the bank
  • My wife always says there are no re does, that you can not go back. I would keep the 2015. Use the cash to pay down the loan or supplement the payments.
  • No worries there on the equity, i have about 15,000$ Positive equity. While this won’t pay for the entire used truck will certainly pay for half. Then will just pay cash for remainder.
  • You might want to take a look at your loan to see if it uses a calculation method called "the Rule of 78" or "Sum of the digits" to compute your interest charges. If this method is used then it means that you may not have the equity you expected in your truck. If this method or other similar methods were used it means you have already paid much of the loan's total interest charge and consequently very little equity, by comparison, was accumulated.

    Laws in your area might not allow the use of these methods but it would be worth it to check it out before proceeding with your downsizing plans.

    I have not had an auto/truck loan since I discovered that these methods were being used to help lenders earn their interest early in the life of the loan.