GOSH, I WISH THAT I WEREN'T SO DUMB......Florida bus again.

[ros]

Agreed, Mark.

Where have you been?

Ros

Maybe  not marrage right away,
But a "test drive" would seem appropriate. ..
Mark

[Jon]

Ros,

Based on your list of wants and needs that you have been posting, along with what you state your budget is indicates you expect to buy a very good coach for very little money. Certainly what you anticipate is something well below market value.

That places a substantial burden on you to respond. A phone call is a good start. But from my limited perspective once that phone call confirms the coach is available, legal to sell, and seems to meet your needs the next step is to show up on the guy's doorstep with a pocket full of Benjamins. Sellers and pictures lie. But on those very rare occasions when the planets line up and the available coach seems to be the one you want there is no substitute for hopping in the car and being there the next morning.

You will kiss a lot of toads before you find the magic prince, but that is the cost or burden you have to accept if you want to be the one buying that bargain. If you are not prepared to show up quickly someone else will. I have sold stuff over the years and I am sure you have so you must realize sellers know buyers lie also. I have wasted more time sending photos and talking to tire kickers and it just seems the guy that shows up with money in his pocket is never the guy that hems and haws because he cannot make it right away because he is too busy. You know the saying "you snooze, you lose".

If you intend to say you can't afford to jump in the car and drive cross country to look at every bus opportunity, keep in mind you likely can't afford a bus no matter how much of a bargain it seems. I'll take the heat for raining on your parade because I remain convinced you are heading for trouble.

[John316]

It makes the 25k we were asking for our bus seem like a good deal, even with the rust .

Jon, great posts. I agree with you. Owning a bus takes a lot more Capitol then one usually thinks. I already suggested a travel trailer for those reasons.

Ros, I really do hope you find the perfect bus. If it is in my area, I will go look at it for you.

[luvrbus]

Tom it happens all the time the spouse passes and the wife is left with the bus and she knows how much her spouse paid and spent of their savings on the bus and she cannot understand why it is not worth what they have spent so for.I know the bus you are speaking of bless her heart she is going to be lucky to get 10 grand .

It makes no difference what he buys they all cost bucks to maintain even the late models John 316 my friend can tell you about the $14,000.00 B500 rebuild late models are not cheap to keep up either.

People walk away from buses everyday and buy pickups and trailers paying $250,000.00 for the setup I don't think is wise but they do it.

People are going to do what they want to with what ever resources they have at their disposal so to me it's a waste of time trying to convince other wise so I just keep looking for a bus that will suit his needs but I tell him up front he is on his on when I find the bus that is far as I go   

ROS has a nice pickup and tag long trailer me I would go with it but I am not him so I wish him luck  

[muldoonman]

Tom it happens all the time the spouse passes and the wife is left with the bus and she knows how much her spouse paid and spent of their savings on the bus and she cannot understand why it is not worth what they have spent so for.I know the bus you are speaking of bless her heart she is going to be lucky to get 10 grand   

My scenario was the same on my coach. We have owned it going on 4 years now. Man died, lady kept bus in barn sitting for 7 years are so. Had a little over 50,000 miles on it. Looked new and still does as we keep it in a barn when not being used.  I knew the guy and coach from new. Asked her though grandson about buying coach and 2 years later she contacted me about buying. Bought it (and found original invoice from converter and what they paid in 92 for bus. $498,125. I gave $57,000 for it. Have spent about $25,000 since then on updating and problems. There's no end to the madness. Good luck and just know there's always something to fix on these babies and on any type of bus. Good luck on your search.

[Purplewillie]

Agreed, Mark.

Where have you been?

Ros

I'm  around... busy as $#!%
Freezing my @$# off, just about ready to come live down south if this weather keeps up!
Hoping something good comes your way....
Take care

[Purplewillie]

Agreed, Mark.

Where have you been?

Ros

I'm  around... busy as $#!%
Freezing my @$# off, just about ready to come live down south if this weather keeps up!
Hoping something good comes your way....
Take care

[ros]

Jon,
Hi, Jon,


You are 'preaching to the choir'.  I am a fervent believer in the 'strike while the iron is hot' principle.  I used to have a surplus oil field equipment business and even well before that, I knew that I had to be the first one with cash in hand to get what I wanted. 

Again, Jon, you are making incorrect assumptions, as you have been doing, when you say something akin to "If you have to ask how much fuel the boat uses, you can't afford it"
I am so sick of hearing stuff like that I hate to hear it again.  Here is my theory and retort to that:  If you DO NOT ask about the expenses, you probably haven't gathered enough money TO afford it because those 'expenses' that you didn't find out about have done you in.  In other words, if one does not pay attention to costs in everything, he won't have money to afford 'things'. 

I don't have money due to some poor planning and life circumstances but I always pay attention to c.o.d.b or cost of doing business.

I have been in quite a few businesses in my life and I usually get bored and move to something else. 

Additionally, I am not on these boards just to find a bus, I am on here to find OUT about buses, including the prices of this or that as I am sure you have seen.

Lately, I have looked at buses quite far from me such as over a thousand miles.
Surely, you don't think that I am dumb enough to go and look at every one of them without doing a modicum of research first, do you?  Well, my modus operandi is thus:
I call right away and try to find out as much as I can via conversation and request lots of pictures, copy of title and just generally try to tell if that has the proverbial 'ring of truth'. 

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have to try to balance my 'act' in finding a bus, finding out all that I can about it, negotiate price before even stepping out the door to go look at it.
I just fail to see why you don't understand that.  Yes, to be sure, some will be lost but that could happen while I am on the way to see the bus.

Practicality of 'busdom'?  It may not be practical for me but it is the only VIABLE way that I can see myself getting a place to live.  I won't go into all of the things that have been hashed and rehashed.

One of the other options is, and Clifford mentioned it, is to live in my trailer and really not have my 'treasures' because the trailer won't carry all of them and a big reason is the trailer, although 34 feet in length, just doesn't have enough room to live in it forever.  Where the practicality comes from is that there would be almost no maintenance on it except for tires from time to time.
If the truck's diesel engine blew up, I would have the money to either fix it or buy another truck all-the-while having the trailer bedded down in an rv park or hauled there.

The two large items about a bus that scare me is the engine and transmission.  I am concerned about tires, too but I could handle tires much easier than the drivetrain.

Who knows how this will turn out?  I certainly don't and no one else does either.

I know that you and others hope that it turns out well.

Thanks

Ros

Ros,

Based on your list of wants and needs that you have been posting, along with what you state your budget is indicates you expect to buy a very good coach for very little money. Certainly what you anticipate is something well below market value.

That places a substantial burden on you to respond. A phone call is a good start. But from my limited perspective once that phone call confirms the coach is available, legal to sell, and seems to meet your needs the next step is to show up on the guy's doorstep with a pocket full of Benjamins. Sellers and pictures lie. But on those very rare occasions when the planets line up and the available coach seems to be the one you want there is no substitute for hopping in the car and being there the next morning.

You will kiss a lot of toads before you find the magic prince, but that is the cost or burden you have to accept if you want to be the one buying that bargain. If you are not prepared to show up quickly someone else will. I have sold stuff over the years and I am sure you have so you must realize sellers know buyers lie also. I have wasted more time sending photos and talking to tire kickers and it just seems the guy that shows up with money in his pocket is never the guy that hems and haws because he cannot make it right away because he is too busy. You know the saying "you snooze, you lose".

If you intend to say you can't afford to jump in the car and drive cross country to look at every bus opportunity, keep in mind you likely can't afford a bus no matter how much of a bargain it seems. I'll take the heat for raining on your parade because I remain convinced you are heading for trouble.

[lvmci]

Hi All, sometimes on the boards, speaking to newbys in particular, we forget about our own urges to have a bus, over other kinds of RVs that may be more practical,  but that didnt have the romance and sexyness, that originally attracted us to busdom, lvmci...

[ros]

Hi, Tom.

That could be.  I never viewed my having a bus as romantic or sexy.  I do view it as a fun thing.  
Maybe that is the same.

Given the small and cramped nature of a travel trailer, I, in no way, see it as a workable option if I am to preserve what little sanity that I have left.

I lived on my boat for two or so years.  It had a lot more space than my trailer and I had a lot of ham gear and tools on it as well.  

Hanging around a lot of boat bums, I learned about shrimp and fishing boats, too.  Many of these boats sailed many thousands of miles with a single diesel engine and their engine problems were very rare.  How do I know this, I kicked around the boat yards both pleasure and commercial yards and it was seldom seen that those commercial boats were there for engine repairs.

Judging by the shape that these boats were in, if one can do that, it would be hard to imagine that their maintenance was exemplary, to say the least.  I would ASSume that they did change oil and filters regularly.

The shrimp boats would be some 20 or so miles offshore due to the nature of shrimp and you should behold the shark feeding-frenzy behind their boat when they culled creatures that they didn't want. There is no way that anyone could survive if they went overboard and that is a promise.  The water was churning crazily and frothing from these denizens while they devoured and vied for these morsels.  There are no words to accurately describe this insane frenzy.  I've seen pictures of such and even they didn't capture the horror and terror of these eating machines.
They were so engrossed in the ritual that they would even eat each other.  Truly horrifying!

We used to come across offshore fishing boats way out to sea and they, too, looked trashy.
I have watched "Deadliest Catch" tv series and their vessels look great.  Also, the offshore supply vessels that we came across way out there, looked in beautiful condition. Most American flag ships that I have been on also looked great.  Paint is foreign to many foreign flagged ships.  

You talk about fun, boating in the vessel that we had WAS/IS sexy and romantic.  There is so much maintenance due to simple attrition that it is hard to grasp.  It was always something.

I put enough stores on our boat as to never need anything unless a major catastrophe occurred.
I had injectors for all engines and generator, many cases of filters (oil, fuel and water and strainers) and there was no air filter.  There is no dust at sea.  You wouldn't believe how many electrical and electronic parts I carried.  I even had a spare radar and radios aboard.
Food for months, as well.  Charts, spare anchors, thousands of feet of line.  Lots of chain, shucks, the list just goes on and one.  We comfortably went in greater than 12 foot seas just to keep our seafaring skills honed.

A funny thing:  Our boat didn't have a state sticker as it was registered as a documented United States, ****** OIL SCREW *****!  That was because of the wheels/propeller being called screws because they act like Archimedes Screw by screwing through the water and the propulsion due to light, diesel, fuel-oil.  Heck, we even had a Panama Canal Certificate which allowed us to enter the locks of the canal.  You must have this and it is, after inspection, issued by the U.S. Coast Guard.


Lord! Did I ever get off on a tangent but it was just so much fun and......WORK, WORK, WORK.

Ros

Hi All, sometimes on the boards, speaking to newbys in particular, we forget about our own urges to have a bus, over other kinds of RVs that may be more practical,  but that didnt have the romance and sexyness, that originally attracted us to busdom, lvmci...

[dbldragon]

 Hi Ross but I just came up with a idea I don't think has been tried .you have a travel trailer and a truck , will you have to sell these to buy the bus ?  If not then how bought a empty bus to haul your worldly possessions that you could slowly make yours and have a smaller trailer to tow behind the bus.
My recent empty bus was well in your range with a series 50 dd 4 speed auto trans . Building a Marathon style coach is costly and time consuming ,but a boon docking functional one can be done rather quickly. I think you already have a gen set so fridge and heat could be a day away.
  Not a RR but a nice Chev.


   Chuck