Everyone has had fun the last few years with these, only partly at my expense, so I'll start a thread for this year too.
Had been trying to make it make sense to buy a one year old F150, and had a good deal lined up through a family member, but in the end, it's crazy for an unemployed guy to be spending 30k+ on a vehicle.
Next thought was that I really hated the under $10,000 world of trucks, because you have to buy something with problems, or something 12+ years old, or something with insanely high mileage, or in many cases, more than one of those. Also, since the only thing I use this truck for is towing, and I always have four people plus firewood, generator, and other gear in the bed, plus tongue weight anticipated to be 900 lbs, I'm usually at or over the payload rating of a half-ton truck. So a 3/4 ton makes a lot of sense.
So, looking for a 3/4 (or 1 ton) crew cab 4x4 truck, 2008 or newer if GMC/Chev, and 2011 or newer if Ford. I hate Ram, so no dice there. Gasoline engines only. Must have no body damage, or at least no insurance claims for body damage or hail, since I'm the guy who loves to make hail claims.
Saw a few obvious ex-fleet Fords that looked decent, although all very low-spec and I could smell the smoke right through the kijiji ads. The more appealing Ford were past the $20k mark, which seemed like a lot. I'm a "ford guy", so I really wanted to be able to talk myself into a blue oval, but just couldn't find anything that clicked.
Despite my Ford Fanboyism, I do admit that the GMC 6.0L gas engine is very sweet when paired with the 6-sped transmission in the 2008+ GMT9000 trucks. See my thread from two years ago about my glorious CCLB hutterite truck.
So I stalked Kijiji, and all the auction listings for a few weeks, and I found my baby this week.
2010 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD LTZ 4x4 CCSB. has the 4.10 gears, trailering package with the big mirrors and Trailer Brake Control, black leather heated seats and interior, basically "Enrichii loaded", everything except the sunroof as far as I know. Never been smoked in, one owner since new and it's a extremely anal engineer who gave me a spreadsheet of all the maintenance history along with the invoices. 221,000kms, but a lot of highway back and fort to a vacation property near Fernie. Guy is a real Chevy fan, he owns two other Chev trucks. I'm not normally one for Black paint, but I liked everything else enough that I can overlook it. Pretty when it's clean anyway.
Not sure I have the energy to flip trucks every year in perpetuity, but hey, we'll see how I feel later in the summer.