So you want to buy a cheap truck from GL?

JCKnife said:

Still waiting for EUC to clear. Lot manager thinks it will drive off with new batteries. Will let you know.

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The End-Use Certificate (EUC) is applied fo after the sale? Then it sits onsite?

What is the normal means of payment? Credit Card?

Yes, yes and yes.

JCKnife said:

Yes, yes and yes.

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I knew it !! Time to start looking for a truck

Look long and hard in person and bid like it is a piece of junk plan on six weeks of rebuild, a wrecker bill of one brick of gold, an euc wait of six months, a bend over inspection to get on base, a gl employee that hates you because you are buying from their pile of crap, half of what you bid on not being there, and this is just some of the things I have had happen and have learned to expect from buying on gl but I will keep rolling those dice because I like to gamble and I have won more than I have lost.

Here is the rundown on my latest truck:

Winning bid: 1350.00
Fees: 150.00
Title: 65.00
Gauges 125.00
Tow off of base: 150.00
Shipping 925.00
Batteries 220.00

I had planned to drive it home, but glad I changed my mind. 5 of the tires are bad, tailight broke, part of the wire harness missing, turn signal switch broken. Fuel tank has sludge in it and keeps plugging fuel filters. All would have had to be fixed before it was derivable.

I would have ended up with a very high towing fee had I attempted to drive it home.

There are no cheap trucks after u add up all the cost, repair, parts missing, transportation, head ache,fees, title, etc some times your better off buying private party!! But im stupid and continue to buy from gl.....

A good post and a lot of good info. But I have a question. What does a person do when he lives out in the sticks? I for one can't afford to drive 2 days to go look at trucks to see if I can drive them home or not. I would like to have more trucks but I never bid on one on GL that does not start. Then when one happens to come up on GL near me, a person has to go rob the bank to win the bid. I guess I was lucky on the one I got, nothing wrong with it but I do not need everything to work for it will never see highway agian once the truck got home, and I hauled it home. But now I am looking for a M818 and I can't haul it, so if I find one on GL what do I do? I love where I live but sometimes it is a pain, my kids have to go 30 miles one way to school. I hope this helps people that live out in the middle of nowhere.

ClintA said:

A good post and a lot of good info. But I have a question. What does a person do when he lives out in the sticks? I for one can't afford to drive 2 days to go look at trucks to see if I can drive them home or not. I would like to have more trucks but I never bid on one on GL that does not start. Then when one happens to come up on GL near me, a person has to go rob the bank to win the bid. I guess I was lucky on the one I got, nothing wrong with it but I do not need everything to work for it will never see highway agian once the truck got home, and I hauled it home. But now I am looking for a M818 and I can't haul it, so if I find one on GL what do I do? I love where I live but sometimes it is a pain, my kids have to go 30 miles one way to school. I hope this helps people that live out in the middle of nowhere.

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You'll just have to find a good running vehicle and drive it home 800+ miles

I'm prepared to drive 1000+ miles for the right truck when I'm ready.

I just read through about half of this thread. All the negativity does not coincide with my experience. I have purchased a number of container trailers, an M915A1, a 3116 Caterpillar engine, a C7 Caterpillar engine, and two 8V92 Detroit Diesel engines from GL. The trailers came from Riley, the truck from Topeka, the first two engines from somewhere in AL, and the Detroits from Texarkana. I hauled the trailers home. GL @ Riley was far more helpful then the description would lead you to believe, as were the guys from the KNG shops who happened out into the yard while we were stacking and loading. I've sold two of them for far more then I paid for all, and the other two will be used as material in a project this next year. I drove the M915 home, and there were at least a dozen more that drove off the lot that morning. Check it over, jump start, and drive home in the rain. We took fuel, my service van, and two guys who know what we are doing to deal with about anything, and had truck and lowboy sitting at the shop ready if needed, but really needed none of it. KNG was starting everyone with slave cables. The guy from Riley was there doing paperwork. He seems to be a very good guy to have on your side, in my opinion. I didn't shut it down en route, but it has been starting for over a year now and has hauled probably in excess of 100k bushels of grain, plus rock and lowboy runs with the only thing replaced so far being a tire we flat spotted. It had a jack, trailer cords, and lug wrenches in it, along with at least 3/4 of a tank of fuel. We partially disassembled the 3116 to inspect....it was obviously a fresh rebuild. It's in one of our Challengers planting corn now. The C7 appears to be nearly unused. It will go into a little Freighliner we have that has a hole in the side of the block. The higher priced 8V also appears to me to be a fresh rebuild engine. The cheap one appears to be complete. Both turn freely and are properly closed up for storage. I have a plan for one, the other one....well, I'll probably get a plan eventually.

So, I'm going to put my success rate a whole lot higher then the percentages being listed here. Granted, I'm no novice about buying machinery...it seems that some people simply have no business buying ANYTHING at an auction....but some of the replies almost give the impression that they come from someone with a vested interest in discouraging participation in surplus auctions.

I think you missed the point of the thread.... There are hundreds of threads on here of people who got really good deals at government auction, but the bad rarely gets posted because who wants to brag about bidding too high on junk.

This thread was just pointing out that it isn't always a perfect situation.

Purchasing your first military truckseems to be a process in and of itself. When I decided to make my first purchase I went on ebay and bid on a few that I liked. As the days and hours ticked down I was constantly out bid at the last possible second. It turns out there is something called sniping on ebay. It is when someone waits till the last possible second to make their bid which does not allow you time to react to increase your bid. I found this to be a load of crap, but it is what it is... I don't bother much with ebay now.

The next idea I had was to purchase via GL. After speaking to a number of people, it didn't take long to realize that I might get a cheap truck that could quickly turn into a money pit. Another possible problem was that of bidding on several items with the notion that if you bid on 5-7, you'll probably only get one, if you're lucky... well sometimes luck is really with you... a guy I spoke to said he ended up with 3... all at a good price, but he still ended up with 3... holy-crap.

Finally I decided to purchase from a private seller so I could talk to him, go over the truck, and even test drive it. Once I get this first purchase under my belt, then maybe I can start to look into making bids on GL... I can already feel urges to pick up a second and third... it was like that when I restored old Ford Mustangs... at one point I had 4 in the yard... (a '66, 2 '67s and a '70)

Good luck to everyone in finding your best deals... I should be picking up my very first deuce this weekend.

Sniping vs open bid

Just to give the other side of the coin - I love snipng on ebay as I have no self control..... Yes, I admit it. I set my budget, it is set to snipe bid at 5 seconds before close - usually when I am fast asleep, don't have to sit by the computer in the last minutes and a win is a real win as I didn't break the bank.... Where as GL; recently got carried away with my impulse first GL buy, ended up panicing and raising my blood pressure right through the deadline, 15 minute rule ran on and on, chucking more money at it... now awaiting EUC. Time will tell if this will be a deep pocket, time consuming rebuild or a good luck, 2012 show attending gem. Oh yes.. bought on strength of vid only
- I assumed the other bidders and similar trucks, same auction had been checked out and they had done the previewing..

"No self control" - but I can and do live by my decisions and am happy with it.

Good luck.

Now you've got me feeling ebay urges again... How do you bid at the last few seconds without being on the computer? Is there some app or something that does it for you?

I would have to say I think I would rather have the last min bid win on ebay over the 15min additional time on every bid on GL. This is just another way the greedy GL owners have it set so they can make the most out of something! Its bad enough that they go as far as putting 5 knives on a pallet of one lot at a time this way you have to pay a min 150 plus buyers premium for one lot of 5 knives then they have 15 lots of same item! The days of getting a good deal are over that's for sure! Im not saying they should have them all in one lot but mann 5 per lot get over your self already!

A Auction is just that a auction the time limit is set and the highest bidder should win! NOT "O we have a few bidders lets go over our set advertised closing time and see just how much these people will pay us"!

But as always this is only my opinion!

I look at it this way. You can buy a truck from one of the vendors and pay $10k (just an example). You know what you're getting and can verify it by driving it beforehand.

Or you can bid on GL. You get what seems to be a truck identical to the vendor's truck. Costs you $7k. You have an adventure retrieving it. You get it, and it really is the creampuff you cherrypicked. WIN!

Or, you bid on GL. You get what seems to be a truck identical to the vendor's truck. Costs you $7k. You have a nightmare of a retrieval, the axle seals leave a trail of oil behind you, and the engine and transmission are bad. You spend another $6k trying to resurrect it. You now have $13k and a headache in a $10k truck.

It's a roll of the dice. It comes down to your tolerance for risk. On the average, GL is the way to go. But if your sample size is 1 and yours is the one that's a deader...

The best looking M923 I bid on GL I won, and it had new paint and tires. It also leaked so much gear oil out of all 4 rear seals that my brakes were smoking badly within 50 miles. I stood on the side of the road beside the truck with a fire extinguisher for 10 min looking for flames. I really don't like those types of adventures.

No sign of the leaks during the pre-check, and it was probably fine just running driving slowly around base, but once the axles heated up on the highway, the oil started flowing freely. An easy 4 hour recovery ended up taking two days and flat-towing rather than an easy drive. It's the one in the foreground in the pic.

98G said:

I look at it this way. You can buy a truck from one of the vendors and pay $10k (just an example). You know what you're getting and can verify it by driving it beforehand.

Or you can bid on GL. You get what seems to be a truck identical to the vendor's truck. Costs you $7k. You have an adventure retrieving it. You get it, and it really is the creampuff you cherrypicked. WIN!

Or, you bid on GL. You get what seems to be a truck identical to the vendor's truck. Costs you $7k. You have a nightmare of a retrieval, the axle seals leave a trail of oil behind you, and the engine and transmission are bad. You spend another $6k trying to resurrect it. You now have $13k and a headache in a $10k truck.

It's a roll of the dice. It comes down to your tolerance for risk. On the average, GL is the way to go. But if your sample size is 1 and yours is the one that's a deader...

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you missed an option, you buy from a private seller on steel soldiers with a good reputation, you know what you are getting, it's a little more then GL if GL still has the trucks for sale and alot less then what the dealers are selling for a truck in the same condition

^^^ We have a winner.

It's most likely what I will be doing if the urge to buy an M1008 gets too strong for me to resist this spring.

Seems like alot of people here are trying to stake their reputation as a reseller. Dont go to gl youll get a lemon! Buy mine instead! {whered you get it?}

Streamline said:

I would have to say I think I would rather have the last min bid win on ebay over the 15min additional time on every bid on GL. This is just another way the greedy GL owners have it set so they can make the most out of something! Its bad enough that they go as far as putting 5 knives on a pallet of one lot at a time this way you have to pay a min 150 plus buyers premium for one lot of 5 knives then they have 15 lots of same item! The days of getting a good deal are over that's for sure! Im not saying they should have them all in one lot but mann 5 per lot get over your self already!

A Auction is just that a auction the time limit is set and the highest bidder should win! NOT "O we have a few bidders lets go over our set advertised closing time and see just how much these people will pay us"!

But as always this is only my opinion!

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The highest bidder DOES WIN. The time limit extension is to prevent sniping. Any REAL LIVE AUCTION DOES NOT END ON A TIME LIMIT. It ends when the bidding slows. To think Ebay is how a "real" auction is conducted is ****ing laughable.

GL is a contactor hired by the govt to sell their crap. It is their JOB to drive prices UP not give you insane deals. The auction is a means for the govt to recover some of the money everyone complains about them wasting so much of.

Sounds to me like you got a case of the whinies. Buy a 75,000 dollar truck for 5k and you say the day of deals is long gone. I think you are stuck living in the past.