My idea of shipping a mostly-but-not-entirely rust-free car to Michigan to find a buyer made sense at the time. Nobody was buying the truck in California since it had some rust and since it wouldn’t pass emissions, with folks even asking to purchase it for parts. I knew the truck would be worth more in Michigan, and given that it wasn’t completely rust-free, I didn’t want to risk an auction site like Bring a Trailer. And so I took the chance and shipped the truck back to Michigan to see if it would be easier to sell there, and I immediately received loads of interest.
I nearly had the truck sold, and my plan would have proven to be genius, but after committing to purchase it for $7250 the buyer backed out at the last minute. Then a tree fell on the truck, making selling it that much more difficult.
Here’s the tree:
The headline of my last article says it all: Shipping My Jeep J10 To Michigan To Find A Buyer Was A Huge Mistake. I did understand the risk when I sent the J10 away on that truck heading out of California towards the midwest. This was a bit of an experiment, and one that I looked forward to writing about.
In the end, it was a learning experience. The J10 is too niche of a product to try to sell this way; there aren’t enough people looking to purchase this particular vehicle, so a sale is going to take a long time. Even though my friend Jamie, who lives in Ann Arbor, has been great about storing the truck in Michigan as I tried to sell it, I still felt like I was burdening him. He and I agree that, if I were to send a relatively rust-free vehicle that were a bit more mainstream, it might have sold more quickly. Also, the tree thing…it happens.
Anyway, there’s a good ending to the story. Last week, a fellow engineer (one who attended Kettering University, a very auto industry-focused school) reached out saying he had seen my listing on eBay and wanted to drive two hours to look at the truck. He seemed serious, and within a few days, he arrived, test drove the J10, offered $5500, and before we knew it he was driving away in his GMC Yukon, with my beloved old truck in tow:
What do I think about the $5500 price? Well, I’m giving $400 to Jamie for his trouble, it cost me $1450 to ship the thing out to Michigan. Factor in my eBay listing fee, and I probably made $3500, which is what I paid for the truck 10 years ago. Not an amazing investment given inflation, but I’m at a different stage in my life now. I have a wife and child and business and 100 year-old house; though I am historically a cheap-bastard, I can’t focus on trying to eke every penny out of an old truck that doesn’t really have a place in my life anymore. I have bigger fish to fry.
I’m just happy the truck found a good home, that Jamie seems happy, and, hey, I have a little change in my pocket for my next ill-advised car purchase wife and child and other important adult obligations.
I bought a 1972 Buick Skylark for $900 many years ago when I first started college. Drove it for 4 years of school and for about a year after. Got my first real job which came with a company car, 3 days before I was supposed to pick up my company car my Buick was hit while I was going around a curve on a dark rainy night. Guy who hit me could not handle the curve. Front fender was crushed against the tire and the drivers doors were all dented up. I pried the fender from the tire and managed to drive the car home. Insurance adjuster calls me, tells me car is totaled and says best he could offer was $650. I did not negotiate or argue a bit, just said “send me the check”. That car served me well.
Congratulations!
You covered costs and you still have a Jeep pickup, so it was a win.
Bought for $3500, sold for the same, got paid to write stories about it. Winner, winner, shower spaghetti dinner!
Spend $3,500 on a J10
Wrench on it, write about and drive it for 10 years.
Sell J10 for $3,500.
That’s absolutely a good deal. Hope the new owner gets as much from it.
[edit] just did the same thing with a ’75 Impala. $1,500, fixer up and drive ‘er about for 8 years, sold ‘er for $1,500. Had fun, didn’t go to the poorhouse.
In my opinion, getting $5500 (and $3500 net after costs) for that heap was about as good as you could expect.
Though I seem to recall that people in California were offering you $3000 for it as a parts vehicle, right?
So on a net basis, you’re ahead $500.
And with that extra $500, you could take your wife Cleopatra and your son Atkinson for a couple of meals at a nice restaurant.
Or have at least 5 trips to the theatre.
Or go Go Karting at least a few times.
It’s not a heap. It’s a low-mileage, mechanically-perfect J10 with a mint condition frame and a decent body that needs a patch here and there and some paint.
He knows what he has 😉
Well he doesn’t have it anymore…
“It’s a low-mileage, mechanically-perfect J10 with a mint condition frame and a decent body that needs a patch here and there and some paint.”
https://media.tenor.com/wE0jylD_O4gAAAAM/goodfellas-laugh-liotta.gif
If the body was my definition of decent, it wouldn’t need a patch here and there… nor would it need paint.
Also, if it was mechanically perfect, then it would have passed the emissions test.
And thus, it meets my own personal definition of ‘a heap’.
LOL
Actually, if you knew these SMOG-era vehicles, you’d know that, had it had passed emissions, it would have been even worse mechanically. This truck SINGS!
But sure, a body being “decent” may mean “zero rust” to some; that’s fair enough.
“if you knew these SMOG-era vehicles, “
I grew up with them. And because I’m familiar with them, it’s why I have no interest in owning them… except maaaaybe if it’s a more interesting one that is dirt cheap and still in good condition for use as an occasional weekend vehicle… OR… for a BEV conversion project.
And I think I did suggest that for your Jeep before you decided to ship it to Michigan to sell… Though that would be an expensive project.
I do love the look of many cars and trucks from that era… but I have no nostalgia for them.
Based on my first hand observations of the 1972 Ford Custom, 1976 Ford Gran Torino, the 1982 Grand Marquis that my dad owned when I was young (along with the experiences neighbours had with their 1970s/smog/malaise era vehicles), I know that compared to modern vehicles, they have lousy fuel economy, lousy emissions, lousy reliability/durability/rust protection, lousy handling (most of the time) and lousy power/acceleration.
Hell… just reading about your challenges of having your old Jeep make power AND pass emissions just reinforces my view.
Modern vehicles are so much better and easier to live with.
Nah, man, those are rose-coloured prescription glasses. It absolutely is a heap. You love(d) it, and I’ve loved my geriatric incontinent cats too.
Congrats on the sale, though, even if it may have been better to donate it to public radio. Get a nice tax deduction, take a gas guzzler off the road (plus the transport truck’s emissions).
“I probably made $3500, which is what I paid for the truck 10 years ago. Not an amazing investment given inflation” Most average people lose a ton of money on their cars in that period of time. You did pretty well
I bought the MGB for about $5,000 5 years ago. a tire shop that sells tires at a “discount” lifted it wrong (after I had told them the right way) and damaged it the day after I bought it. Their insurance wrote me a check for like $4500. I drove it with some bent sheet metal and cracked Bondo for 5 years and then sold it to a fellow Autopian for a good deal that I advertised as “a price that you will barely regret later”. I enjoyed wrenching on it for a long time, but I was frustrated after a string of issues and moved to an NC Miata which has more of an optional rather than mandatory wrenching program.
I look at it as that I got 5 years of wrenching and enjoyment out of the MGB for the price of a set of tires, some cheap parts, and a lot of hours of labor. It was a good deal if I look at it that way. If I factor in that I cashed in 3 oz of gold that my grandpa gave me at about $1900 an oz to buy the MG, it was a really bad investment. It’s all your perspective.
Congrats on the sale.
Not too shabby sir.
Congrats! One less thing to worry about.
Did you have $3500 offers in California?
I recall reading that he had a $3000 offer in Cali.
Good! Let’s hope we all learned something from this adventure, and that the new owner has many years of satisfactory ownership with it.
Congratulations Jamie! Keep on truckin.
Ha, yes it is quite nice to not worry about it any more. Stupid tree branch. ????
I don’t think you can really count the $1450 against the selling price. That was an unrelated correction to the mistake of taking it to California in the first place. Not the truck’s fault.
$8800 was an insane listing price. I suspect the truck would have sold on schedule had it been listed for $6000, or something else closer to the actual $5,500 value.
The truck was actually listed at $6000 for months. It’s just a niche product; this is just how it goes.
As for the “mistake” of taking it to California… It was worth it for the story Andrea and Josie wrote.
Don’t forget you enjoyed it (probably some days more than others) for 10 years, and made your $ back (unadjusted of course). That counts for something, I don’t usually do that well on my choices.
Not to mention sweet, sweet CONTENT!
Yeah, he essentially had a free truck (minus repairs) for a decade. Not bad.
Congrats! While you didn’t make as much money as you had hoped, I bet ultimately selling this is a relief for you, and soon enough you’ll forget all about this.
On that note, this is a good place to share my sketchy story about purging a vehicle I no longer needed, and it’ll probably make you even more thankful for your experience.
Back in November I bought a rolling shell of a Ford LTD with missing title strictly for parts. In the last few weeks I’ve stripped all the parts I wanted and now I was ready to get rid of the shell. I put it on Marketplace as scrap and a dude said he’d pick it up last weekend. He flaked on me but said he’d come yesterday at 10:30AM.
He eventually turned up at 4PM in his Silverado 1500 slammed on its rear bump-stops because it was towing a literal semi-truck flatbed trailer with only 3 intact tires. The 4th was totally shredded. He just shrugged and said he didn’t have a spare.
He didn’t have a winch, the trailer was tall, and the ramps were short, so the car got high centered as it was halfway up. But between my truck pulling the car up with a big chain, a hand winch, some 2x4s, and brute force we got it up there and it’s no longer my problem lol.
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/QhkCYit
Whoa, that’s sketchy. I hope you blocked his number after he pulled away so he couldn’t call you asking for help when he got stranded by another blowout 30 minutes later.
He drove 20 miles to my place like that and was going to pick up more junk 20 miles further away after me.
I know that scrap metal collectors are pretty “scrappy” and just get things done, but this was a whole other level. Surprisingly I had to provide most of the direction to actually get the car on the trailer. Good thing it’s not my first rodeo loading and unloading derelict cars. Afterwards the guy joked that he should hire me, lol.
I, too, have spent time in a Lemons paddock.
Git er done!
How is this not AI?
AI isn’t this delusional.
AI is delusional in a more rational way.
rational? maybe in a “I can count to 7 & 9/16ths on one hand” kind of way, sure.
Looks like somebody is already forgetting about Michigan Ingenuity.
Remember this?
https://www.jalopnik.com/i-just-came-home-to-a-junkyard-1829917855/
Oh man, I loved that article. I was recently passing through the Troy area and almost stopped by Dave’s old house to see how many relics of his I could find in the yard.
wildly impressive in an insanely dangerous kind of way.
Yikes! Belongs on the subreddit “IdiotsTowingThings” That poor truck…
Good lord that is sketchy
He doesn’t have a spare? There’s literally a spare on top of the trailer. Unless that one is shredded too??
None matched the trailer. Not sure what they actually were spares for.
I’d like to know the ROI for your psyche now that it’s no longer burdened by this.
Congrats on the sale. I’m sure you’ll find a way to add another Holy Grail Jeep to the fleet somehow.
What Holy Grail Jeep is left that David hasn’t owned? The 1980’s Jeepster designed by The Bishop, probably.
1998 Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited. Always the answer. Never took it off-road, but gawd I loved mine.
I had one too and absolutely loved it. I wish that I had kept it
Well, well, well.
If it ain’t Mr “I made a HUUUIUGE mistake shipping my J10 across country to sell it” coming in here to tell us how he basically broke even.
Well, lah-dee-fricken-dah.
Don’t you know cars are a terrible investment?!? Next thing you know, Mercedes is gonna buy some fancy VW and not lose her shirt on it!
What has this site become? You guys used to be cool…
lol
“What has this site become? You guys used to be cool…”
What do you think happens after you get married and have kids? You don’t stay cool after that.
Just getting married meant the death of Independent David
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ut4DTu-xM
And we all let it happen!!!
Tim Cook bought your Jeep?
*Surely I’m not the only one who sees it.
I didn’t at first, but I see it now.
I guess He is leaving apple, so now he’s gonna have a lot more time on his hands.
This neatly colors in one of my favorites points about owning an average old car: they don’t really depreciate. Looks like it was pretty hard for you to get upside down on this truck, although not for lack of trying: you shipped it cross-country twice and when that didn’t work, you dropped a tree on it. Still, car gods said “nah you’re good, here’s your money back”
haha!
Very true. I drive nearly exclusively 90s cars for my dailies, and even after several years and tens of thousands of extra miles, I almost always at least break even if not make money on them.
I bought a 1983 Mercedes W123 in 2015 for $3000 and sold it in 2025 for… $3000.
World’s most ominous strikethru at the end, there, but I’m glad she found a new home. Hopefully she drives the streets again soon!
Honestly, couldn’t ask for a better result.
I would absolutely consider this a win, 100%. I wish I could have rented such a cool vehicle like this for 10 years for basically free.
You got back what you paid after 10yrs even taking into consideration what you put into it, I’d consider that a win.
In terms of fiat currency sure, but due to inflation it really would end up costing about $130 a year if he had originally bought it for $3500 10 years ago. Still incredibly cheap to own; but not breaking even in real terms especially if he settled where everyone thought it should have been before the double cross country drive at $5500 minus the shipping expenses vs the I know what I got price of $7250 that the other buyer backed out of.
At least it ended up in the hands of a fellow enthusiast.
Congratulations.