ok, i'll be the guinea pig for the buying board.
i pull a Wilson hopper for harvest and haul fertilizer and bagged seed the rest of the year, out of Fergus Falls. old truck was a 2012 T800 with an ISX that had turned into a coolant loss machine at 1.1 million. my shop in Wahpeton had quit writing estimates, they just shook their heads when i pulled in.
i wanted a 389. new ones are north of 230 with the stuff i'd want on it. used ones around here with under 500k were 115 to 130 on the dealer lots, and half of those were fleet flattops with the paccar engine.
found this one on Lake Park Auto Connection. it's a broker for bank repos, their office is in lake park, about an hour up the road from me. the trucks aren't there, they sit wherever the lender parked them after the repo. this one was at a lender's yard outside Oklahoma City.
the truck. 2021 Peterbilt 389, 131 hood, X15 at 565, 18 speed, 3.55 rears, the mid roof sleeper, about 480k. the listing had a pile of photos including the dash odometer, the frame rails, and the tires with a gauge stuck in the tread. before i bid i paid a mobile tech in OKC 275 to go look and pull an ECM report. 22 percent idle, one inactive NOx sensor code from last winter, brakes around 60 percent, coolant clean.
it's a sealed bid. one number, you never see anyone else's. i put in 104,500 and won. no buyer's premium on top, the invoice was the bid and nothing else. it came up on a step deck 12 days after my bank wired the money.
so did i overpay? be honest, i can take it.
since you asked. yes, some.
i read the sale results every week because i'm retired and my wife has the TV remote. last couple months, 2021 389s with X15s and 400 to 550k:
Ritchie in Oklahoma City, 565 hp, 18 speed, 512k, hammered at 88,000.
IronPlanet online, 500 hp, 13 speed, 447k, 93,500.
Ritchie in Fort Worth, 565 hp, 18 speed, 471k, same sleeper as yours, 96,000.
so you're 8 to 16 over the auction comps. that's not robbery. but it's a set of drives and a set of steers you could have had in your pocket.
figured that'd be you.
so you're 8 to 16 over the auction comps.
on the hammer price, sure. now put the buyer's fee on those. on a 96,000 truck that's several grand at the big auction houses. then get it home from Fort Worth, that's 1,100 miles and three days of me not hauling, or paying somebody. the lake park truck had no premium and got dropped in my yard.
96 plus the fee plus getting it here lands me right around 104 or 105. so i'll call it even with your Fort Worth truck. i'll give you the OKC one, 88 is a good number. but that one sold with a check engine light on in the dash photo, i went and looked it up.
leaving the price fight to you two. i went through the photos in your album link instead.
look at the passenger steer in the fourth picture. the tread is feathered on the inside shoulder and the driver side isn't. could be alignment, a tired shock, maybe a tie rod end. it doesn't mean much alone, but you're heading into harvest with 80,000 on the scale. get it on an alignment rack before the first run.
ECM report reads clean for 480k. 22 percent idle is on the high side for an over the road truck, usually means the last guy lived in it.
new here, and about to be where you are. my MC number came through in august and i'm going on my own authority out of Brookings instead of leasing on.
question nobody at my bank can answer. how did you pay for it? my credit union says they'll do a truck loan but they want a unit they can walk around, and the whole point is the truck is sitting in Oklahoma. did you pay cash or find a lender that would go off photos?
did you pay cash or find a lender that would go off photos?
sort of the second one. my ag lender in Fergus has done my equipment notes for 15 years so they already know me. they wanted the VIN, the listing photos, the inspector's write up and the ECM printout, and they gave me a pre-approval up to 110 before i bid. after i won they wired it and put their lien on the new title. a credit union that doesn't do trucks might not play ball. try a farm credit office or an equipment lender that already does used class 8.
walt, you were right. passenger steer shock was leaking down the body and the alignment shop in Fergus had the toe way out. 160 for a pair of shocks, 180 for the alignment. that's all the money i've put in it so far.
D
mod_dale_k
Moderator
- 10-20
- Detroit Lakes, MN
- posts
- 52
- joined
- Sep 2025
mod hat on for a second. pinning this on the buying board, first real purchase report and it's got numbers in it.
for the people asking me by message, the outfit in lake park is on US-10 west of Detroit Lakes, i drive past it every week. there's no lot full of trucks and no showroom, so don't drive up expecting to kick tires. the units are wherever the bank has them.
and keep the comps coming. one thread where somebody argues about the price is worth more than ten that say great deal.
M
minot_w900
Owner-Op
- 10-20
- Minot, ND
- posts
- 9
- joined
- Sep 2025
same outfit, different truck. i got a 2020 W900L out of Texas through them this summer and wrote it up over here: 2020 W900L from Texas to Minot. mine ran past the free delivery miles so i paid some overage, it's all in that thread. short version, the truck matched the pictures.
paperwork question since we're shopping for a second truck. how long from winning to having a title in your hand? we got burned on a private sale once where the title sat at somebody's bank for six weeks and the truck sat in our yard doing nothing.
posting from the elevator line in Breckenridge, 14 trucks ahead of me so i've got time.
linda, the truck got here before the title did. the lender had to release their lien before they could sign it over, and the release and the title came by FedEx 9 days after the truck. the broker told me up front it would go that way, so no surprise, but it meant i couldn't get plates in my name for the first week and a half of harvest. i borrowed my brother's T800 for that stretch.
once the title showed up it was one trip to the deputy registrar in Fergus and my IRP was just adding a unit to the account i already had. if you're on a clock, buy early.
read the whole thing again with my coffee. i'll give you this much. if you'd gone to Fort Worth you'd have had your truck the same week and your own plates on it for harvest. you traded ten days of waiting on a title for 1,100 miles of driving. call that a wash.
still think 104 was a little rich. we'll find out what it's worth when you go to trade it.
harvest is done up here. how many miles did you put on it and how's it doing now that it's cold? mine lost a battery the first morning it hit zero.
UPDATE, 11 weeks in.
14,800 miles on it since it came off the step deck. harvest was 212 hopper loads, corn and beans into Breckenridge and Wahpeton, then beets the last three weeks. the X15 hasn't used a quart between changes. fuel is running 6.0 loaded on the short hauls, better than the T800 ever did.
the thing i didn't see coming. a guy from Barnesville who hauls for the co-op walked around it at the scale and offered me 112 cash, right there. i said no. but i told retired_379_driver i'd report it, so there it is. 7,500 over what i paid at the lake park auction, with 11 weeks of harvest already on it.
cold weather so far. the block heater cord was chewed through, something in Oklahoma had been living under that truck. found it the first night it hit single digits, 45 bucks. i'd bid on another one through lakeparkautoconnection.com, i'd just line the loan up in august instead of september.
