With its dually back end, diesel V8 and four on the floor, today’s Nice Price or No Dice F-250 sure seems to have what it takes to get the job done. We’ll still have to decide if its price works for us.
The federal government’s 25-year rule makes importing unmodified older cars legal. It doesn’t, however, do anything to lower the mountains of paperwork still required to get one of those cars over here — through customs and registered for the road. That can lead to dangerous hand cramps from the multitude of signatures the process requires, or even the potential loss of life from paper cuts.
That’s all why yesterday’s 1994 Fiat Coupe was such an intriguing opportunity. It already had all of that paperwork done and as a result was sitting pretty with a clean Texas title and registration. As we all know, value can be created through the melding of raw materials and work. In the case of that Fiat, the seller set the value for the car along with the effort to get it legally on our shores at $13,000. Not too many of you saw it the same way. In the end, that price wasn’t doing it for the majority of you, and the Fiat fell in a 71 percent No Dice loss.
Paperwork, often denoted as white-collar work, can be mentally taxing. In contrast, blue-collar work, whether it be in manufacturing, repairing or tilling the land, is frequently taxing to both mind and body.
There was a docuseries on PBS a few years back called A Chef’s Life. It detailed the life of a New York-trained chef, Vivian Howard, who along with her husband returned to her hometown in rural North Carolina to open a chichi restaurant. Their sit-down establishment focused on locally sourced, indigenous ingredients, with one of those being the showcase of each episode of the TV show.
Ms. Howard frequently was shown harvesting or just discussing a particular vegetable with Warren Brothers, the owner/operator of a small, sustainable farm from which she sourced some of her restaurant’s food stocks.
It’s a wonder that small farms such as Brothers’ business can continue to exist. Corporate megafarms seem to rule the food-growing industry, and many of these small, family-run farms have gone belly up or have been swallowed up the big guys as a result.
What that means is, should you be planning on taking up tilling the soil as a way of making a living, you’ll need to be smart about how you do it. And that includes how the money is spent in making the effort bear literal fruit. Remember what I said about blue-collar work requiring both mental and physical exercise?
Of course, one key tool demanded of such an endeavor is a sturdy and dependable truck. This helps to not only get stuff to and from the farm but also in getting through the mud and muck around those happy little acres.
To meet those needs you’ll want a truck with a stout and reliable diesel engine, available 4-wheel drive, and should you need to load it up or tow anything of significant weight, a dual wheels at the back.
Well, it just so happens that this 1987 Ford F-250 single cab dually is just such a truck. Also, since you’re going to be working a farm anyway, you might as well work the truck’s transmission. This truck has a four-speed stick to let you do your thing.
There’s not much in the way of description in the ad. That’s primarily owed to it being offered on Facebook marketplace, the automotive classified venue second only to a hermit’s inner-lip tattoo in its effectiveness for communicating to its intended audience.
The ad does provide a number of pictures — on what looks to be a farm, no less. It does offer limited information, stating that the truck is in “great condition for its age.” It also notes that it “does not use oil starts right up runs great.” The odometer reads 55,000 miles, although the ad does not note if that’s original or if it’s been around the horn.
The pictures show a truck that seems to be appreciably rust-free, supporting the boast that it’s in great condition for its age. This is a work truck, so the cabin is spartan, with a vinyl bench seat and wind-up windows. The wide rear end seems to be for load capacity rather than trailering as it not matched with appreciably wide mirror mounts on the doors. Steel wheels with lots of lugnuts fill those extended arches as well as those of the narrower fenders up front.
Power is provided by Ford’s 6.9-liter IDI diesel. That’s a naturally aspirated indirect-injected V8 that was factory-rated at 170 horsepower and 370 lb-ft of torque. Along with the truck’s manual transmission and 4WD, that should make for a fairly versatile workhorse no matter what line of business you might be in. The most important question, however, is whether it would make a good business investment.
The asking price is $3,800, and you now need to weigh in on whether this work truck is worth that kind of cash. What do you say, could you see paying that much for so spartan and old a truck? Or, does that age and price make this a farm truck that you’d just as soon put out to pasture?
You decide!
Facebook Marketplace, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, or go here if the ad disappears.
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