Long Trips

Friend of mine, was the main reason i wanted one of these trucks. He is NOT a maintenance heavy kinda guy, he has been driving his 2004 for like 12 years. He worked in Dallas and lived in Atlanta and was driving back and forth every or every other weekend to see his ole'lady for a LONG time. He literally does no maintenance and has practically never touched the truck.
I asked him
"how many times have you ever replaced the wheel bearings"
-never
"how many times have you had to replace those lower ball joints"
-never
"how often are you replacing brake pads"
-about every 100,000
"how often are you changing the oil"
-depends on when i can get to it

You would never know by looking at it, but last time i checked in with him about it was late summer 2022 and he had 550,000 on it. He doesnt drive those trips anymore, he does something where he isnt driving as much now. I run all over the southern half of the country in my vehicles, southern california to southern florida back and forth a few times a year. I drive toyotas for this reason, its the only way to travel with comfort without a new car warranty. For years i ran Ram 2500-3500 trucks, but kept them a short amount of time to keep them in the warranty period, this was costly but it gave me peace of mind in my travels to have a "new" truck and have a warranty to back me up in case of failures. Each one of my diesel trucks gave me failures, once or twice they ruined trips or made things take LOTS longer, but warranty did fix the issues other than the loss of time. I have probably racked up a million miles on my toyotas in the last 15 years making trips back and forth and have only had one coil pack go bad while driving. Aside from that, doing standard maintenance, i have never had a break down or failure in my Toyotas. They definitely give you a different peace of mind. My daily driver is a 4runner with 230,000 on the clock and i will load that dude up with stuff and drive from here to anywhere in the country without even thinking twice about it

 

Here you go, Sam. Have a great time on your travels.

 

be a good uncle to someone and help them however you can…20-30 years later, someone knocks on your door and it’s your nephew with a title on his shirt pocket and 2 sets of keys and you’re saying “no no, I can take it” but then you sit down on your kitchen table with him and realize this is a nice thing for both of youse. You get up, hug it out and say “see you soon”. Simple as that.

 

I saw him friday, he has 586,000 on it now, and he was going to drive to South Carolina this weekend from Mississippi.