Anybody ever buy a truck with a salvage title?

[BurbMan]

Looking at a 2017 Cummins/Aisin, has salvage title due to rebuild after front end collision. Price is $10k below market. Supposedly inspected by a company called BlueStar.

[RetiredRealtorR]

Groover wrote:
I have had a salvage vehicle for 8 years. We have driven it 80,000 miles and still haven't found any evidence of the damage that led to the salvage title. The only problem has been that financing was harder to get but the discount was substantial so we just paid cash. No regrets so far.

Bear in mind also, that a salvage (rebuilt title) vehicle could also be a theft recovery vehicle, hence no physical damage occurred.

[Groover]

I have had a salvage vehicle for 8 years. We have driven it 80,000 miles and still haven't found any evidence of the damage that led to the salvage title. The only problem has been that financing was harder to get but the discount was substantial so we just paid cash. No regrets so far.

[bucky]

Every state has it's own DMV statues, but one thing is universal among the states. The sellers think that a salvage/rebuilt titled vehicle is worth 90% of one with a clean title.
Run Forest run. Are you the exception? Dealer(casino) always wins.

[Dennisokey]

I agree if flood stay away. If not a food damaged vehicle, I would look at current kbb.com private seller price and deduct at least 1/3 or more of current value. Call your insurance broker and make sure they will write coverage and talk to someone at state DMV to see their requirements.

Take to mechanic to check out and a good body shop.

[jerem0621]

I would with no problem. In my state a rebuilt title is only issued after inspection of the work by a state inspector.

FLOOD- No way no how.

You can have it inspected for sure, and I would recommend it.

Also, as we learned the hard way, there are laws about when an insurance company can write off a vehicle. In my state if the rebuild cost of the wreck is 75% ish of the value of the vehicle or more than they have to write it off.

If it's 74% the existing vehicle gets rebuilt. We ran into that when our nearly new 2013 Kia was hit hard from the rear.

Our car was somewhere around 65% of the value to get rebuilt. The CarFax ended up saying "Minor Rear End Collision" which was false IMHO. The car was twisted like a pretzel and had to be put on a frame rack to be fixed.

What this means is that there are all kinds of vehicles that are put back on the road that were only a few % points away from being totaled. And the CarFax will say "Minor Collision". and the only inspector will be the customer because the title never changed from being "clean" to "salvage" or 'rebuilt".

I have family members who do professional body work and I appreciate their skill sets. But realizing that a salvage title to be put back on the road requires a pretty good inspection process, but just a few value % points away it's just a minor collision on a CarFax and doesn't require that external inspection.

JMHO, based on experience.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

[RetiredRealtorR]

mich800 wrote:

BurbMan wrote:
You guys pretty much confirmed what I was thinking...this is the vehicle I was looking at from Auto Z Inc. who says they specialize in restoring salvage vehicles. The Car Fax says this one had front end damage, obviously enough to total it out, so it had to be pretty bad.

It's true that USAA will insure them, but they won't finance them....

Anyways, I found a couple closer than Utah...

Also, difficult to tell in the pics from Truecar maybe because of lighting. But looks like some weird paint matching on the passenger side, especially looking at the rear door.

Definite paint mismatch, like fingernails on a blackboard! How much more would the same truck cost with a clean title? Remember, some day you'll want to re-sell it too.

[DownTheAvenue]

Looking at the pictures of that vehicle, I can tell you that it was repaired by someone who took shortcuts. How do I know? Look at the passenger side photo. There is a definite paint color difference between the front and read door. The rebuilder painted the parts he replaced, but did not take the time to blend the paint into the unrepaired area, which would have been more expensive. No way would I ever consider that vehicle. No telling what else what was done half a$$.

[mich800]

BurbMan wrote:
You guys pretty much confirmed what I was thinking...this is the vehicle I was looking at from Auto Z Inc. who says they specialize in restoring salvage vehicles. The Car Fax says this one had front end damage, obviously enough to total it out, so it had to be pretty bad.

It's true that USAA will insure them, but they won't finance them....

Anyways, I found a couple closer than Utah...

Also, difficult to tell in the pics from Truecar maybe because of lighting. But looks like some weird paint matching on the passenger side, especially looking at the rear door.

[mich800]

BurbMan wrote:
You guys pretty much confirmed what I was thinking...this is the vehicle I was looking at from Auto Z Inc. who says they specialize in restoring salvage vehicles. The Car Fax says this one had front end damage, obviously enough to total it out, so it had to be pretty bad.

It's true that USAA will insure them, but they won't finance them....

Anyways, I found a couple closer than Utah...

I have purchased branded title vehicles. Just do your research. Many times you can search the vin to view the actual damage and if they were hiding flood damage.



Here is yours at auction

[deltabravo]

I wouldn't touch one with a 100' pole. There's far too many unknowns that could cause issue to crop up later, like drivability issues, tracking down the road straight, who knows what else.
Dealing with those possible issues down the road is not worth getting a bargain price for up front.

[mtofell1]

BurbMan wrote:
The Car Fax says this one had front end damage

Carfax is a fine tool to learn some stuff about a vehicle but there are all kinds of REALLY bad things that can happen to a vehicle that will not show up. Basically, it has to go through a public database (usually DMV) to show up. One car accidents, flooding and all kinds of other things won't show up. Most insurance companies don't report to DMV or Carfax, etc.

[BurbMan]

You guys pretty much confirmed what I was thinking...this is the vehicle I was looking at from Auto Z Inc. who says they specialize in restoring salvage vehicles. The Car Fax says this one had front end damage, obviously enough to total it out, so it had to be pretty bad.

It's true that USAA will insure them, but they won't finance them....

Anyways, I found a couple closer than Utah...

[northshore]

Salvage title vehicles are like most questions "it depends"
Like said above it depends on the damage and who and how the repairs were done. It depends if you can absolutely know the facts of these questions.
If water is involved that's another whole can of worms.
I have avoided salvage vehicles and never bought one, mostly because every salvage vehicle has been associated with people who could not give "absolute positive proof of the damage and repair method" or did not care to share the facts.
There will be lots of people who bought and had absolutely no problems with their salvage vehicle, you will also probably hear about guys who do the rebuild and they are top quality vehicles when they are complete.
There are stories/shows on tv where they follow vehicles that have salvage/or should have salvage titles and most of those are horror stories.
I guess its one of those "you pays your money and take your chances"

Every salvage vehicle I've ever seen had small damage to the bed of the truck, or it was just a bent bumper, kind of like EVERY craiglist boat motor "starts on the first pull"

[Sandia_Man]

Never purchased a salvage diesel truck, but we have purchased two cars that had salvage titles. Of course did research on why they were salvage vehicles and let my mechanic give them a once over. USAA had zero problems insuring them and they both turned out to provide great service to my kids as their first cars which they used while going to college. Both are still functioning and have over 100K miles, they do not have high resell value, they were passed on to other extended family members.