Looking to do a fly and drive

Looking to buy a Gmt800 pickup or full size van, and seeing as i'm in South Dakota most are pretty rusty. What's the best way to search a wide area for something like this? Those of you that have done this, any tips?

Thanks!

Pick a city with a big airport, Houston, San Antonio, and then keep your eyes peeled on CL. The easier route is probably to check Autotrader by grabbing the zip code where those airports are and searching within 50 miles of them. These trucks are common enough you should find a billion of them.

Go to Searchtempest.com and search multiple Craigslists? Obviously do a lot of vetting. I've never had a bad experience travelling to buy a car, but they're usually from enthusiast type people.

In reply to mazdeuce:

I live a little south of Philadelphia. When searching the various sites, I usually use the zipcode for Alexandria, Virginia, with a 100 mile radius. This gets me cars right up to my actual location, but not farther north into the real rust belt. Otherwise 80% of my hits are saltbuckets from south-central New York state.

So, to the OP, yeah, pick a big city airport in the sweet spot and search Autotrader, Carguru, and CL. In this case I think it's worth the premium to get a good truck from a large dealer with a good reputation, since you'll be investing a fair amount of time and expense in the hunt. It's not like driving an hour to see a POS that looked good on craiglist.

What airport would you be flying from?
The airports in South Dakota are not that big and additional, there are probably not a lot of direct flights out of SD.

As an example, you might find that you can get a direct flight to Dallas but going to Kansas City means you have to go through Dallas also. In that case, Dallas may be the right market to focus on.

Said another way research what cities are easiest and cheapest to get to from your airport and then shop in that city.

mazdeuce wrote: These trucks are common enough you should find a billion of them.

It depends a bit on the details. If you want a 4x4 1500 with a V8 and aren't really picky about cab config, then yeah, there are a zillion. If you want a 2500HD RWD LBZ crew cab short bed with the leather interior and under 150K miles, then that gets more complicated. :)

Pretty much what codrus said. I'm being pretty picky about the pickup I buy, as I plan to hold on to it.

I can get flights out of Sioux Falls, but I guess I haven't looked into cost of them yet.

Thanks for the help guys.

Direct flights out of FSD
There are only 9.

For truck buying:

St. Pete or Sanford, FL.
Denver
Phoenix
Dallas
Atlanta

Vegas is listed but Vegas tends to be a very high priced car market. I would not shop there.

Atlanta has a great reputation of being an inexpensive vehicle market but farther away for you.

In Texas, the pick up truck is king so huge selection.

I bought a car out of Denver and it was spotless for rust. Closest for you too.

Florida varies. If the seller can see the ocean from their house then you don't want their vehicle because the salt water air will cause rust from the top down which is different than the typical northern rust which is from the bottom, up.

Phoenix is probably really good too.