Spent a little money on the fleet.

You might remember I dumped two high mileage vans and bought a couple of small trucks to replace them. That left me with one 1997 E150, and parked next to the trucks it was really showing it's age so I decided it was time for a update. The decals were peeling, the paint badly faded, bumpers and wheels rusting.

The original plan was to have the bumpers, wheels, and grill painted and the update the decals. A little digging showed I could buy chrome parts for what painting would cost. It got the bumpers and grill today and last week, a professional buffing and new signage.

Total spent will be less than $1500 and it will look at least 1000% better.

I didn't take any before pictures, but it looked a lot like this. Not horrible, but not good either.

New hotness.

There is a set of these showing up next week to replace the wheels.

While we were at it, the tint guy took care of the trucks.

I'll try to remember to post more pictures after the wheels are changed.

My dad used to do something similar with his work vans. We would take a week vacation once a year during spring break, and he would drop it off at a body shop guy who would fix any rust that was starting, fix any scrapes, and detail it up. He had the easiest time selling the vans because, despite the engines being so far gone they were often running on 7 cylinders, the bodies were completely rot free in Wisconsin.

In reply to Rufledt:

My biggest concern, is it's hard to look professional, in a technical industry, while driving a beater. This van was starting to look like a beater.

It's cheaper to updated them than it is to replace them and at 223K miles, this one is just getting broken in.

In reply to Toyman01:

That's mostly why my dad did it. The van has the company's signage on it, you don't want to advertise a filthy image of your business. Also how do you get so many miles out of those vans? my dad tends to burn them up well before 223k!

In reply to Rufledt:

We see a fair amount of highway miles and we don't run fully loaded all the time. The two I just sold had 470K and 430K. They were well used up. The 470K van, was on it's second engine and transmission. The 430K was still on the original engine and transmission, but I spent $2k having the engine pulled and resealed, to keep it from dumping all the fluids out every week. Even with all that care, it was starting to do it again and with that many miles, even the metal the seals run on is worn away. Also, don't buy the Tritons. Both of mine were 4.2 V6 vans. They don't make enough HP to hurt themselves.

ah that makes sense. he always replaced the vans when the original engine started to die, usually around 180k. His were basically all city miles, often overloaded, and pretty heavy on the gas. I think he had tritons for the most part, he tends to prefer more power. He even once test drove some mostly identical vans, tested each one 0-60, and bought the fastest one . His current van is a V10 i think.

His best story was about an older one, i think it had a windsor 351 that was well worn. There was a steep hill in town he sometimes drove up. He would hold it in first and see if he could make it to the top of the hill before the smoke at the bottom of the hill would dissipate! It would barely hit the speed limit by the top, probably because it was so overloaded and worn out (hence the smoke).

Come to think of it, I now know exactly why you get more miles out of your vans!

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Rufledt: My biggest concern, is it's hard to look professional, in a technical industry, while driving a beater. This van was starting to look like a beater.

That's what I never understood about Comcast. Guys drove around beater vans that were dented, rusted, decals peeled off, etc. Sometimes when the vans would get bodywork, they wouldn't replace the decals, so sometimes guys were pulling up to people's houses with plain white vans and customers were worried they were impersonators.

For a place concerned about their image, they don't give two E36 M3s about their fleet.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: In reply to Rufledt: My biggest concern, is it's hard to look professional, in a technical industry, while driving a beater. This van was starting to look like a beater.

That's what I never understood about Comcast. Guys drove around beater vans that were dented, rusted, decals peeled off, etc. Sometimes when the vans would get bodywork, they wouldn't replace the decals, so sometimes guys were pulling up to people's houses with plain white vans and customers were worried they were impersonators. For a place concerned about their image, they don't give two E36 M3s about their fleet.

That it was Comcast doesn't surprise me. They had the worst service I have ever experienced.