RobOnBusiness
ArboristSite Lurker
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2014
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 4
I've been waiting a long time to post this! I'm not going to name names, but if anyone wants to know, just ask. Anyway, I'm from Alberta, Canada, and bought my first bucket truck this last Spring stateside, to complement my other chip truck, in my tree removal business. In March I flew to West Chester, PA, and bought a truck I'd seen at an online used equipment dealer, and toward which I'd made a non-refundable $5k deposit, based on the pictures, details, and seller's phone promise that it was fully inspected and "work ready". The total price was $40k USD. To be fair, the seller did pay my airfare from Alberta to PA, as he promised. Firstly, when I arrived from the airport, the seller didn't even make eye contact with me as he shook my hand. His yard looked like a scrap yard. Then I saw the truck, and my fears were confirmed. As it turned out, nothing except the emergency brake and heater worked properly (according to mine and Alberta commercial vehicle inspection specifications). It looked and acted sorely neglected, and I was sorely disappointed. It felt as if it had come on a flatbed straight after an auction (since it had all the rusty spots spray bombed over), and was flipped for a profit. So, it was a choice between forfeiting the $5k, or repairing it when I got it home. It never made it out of the state before the engine lost so much power, I had to pull off the highway. I limped it to North Dakota where it finally failed completely, and I had to have it towed to the border, then to Regina, Saskatchewan to the nearest dealer. It sat there for 3 months while it was repaired to make it roadworthy, to the tune of an extra $20k CAD. My season got real busy after that, with an early snowstorm in September, breaking about half the trees here, still sporting full leaf canopies. Finally, after I had a chance to sit down and call the seller about my adventure, he replied he had made an honest deal, and I had bought a truck at fair value that was indeed work ready at the time of purchase. I told him at the beginning of the conversation that I was going to post my experience, as a warning to others following me, about purchasing a bucket truck, because, here in Canada, $40k USD will buy a lot more bucket truck than I received there. He replied that he would set his lawyers onto me for defamation of character. So, I then called a lawyer's office in PA, asking them what constitutes defamation there, and the upshot is that the offending party would have had to not be served notice, being "privileged" about the situation, plus that the content be false. So, I come clean, and I have all the bills and old parts here to back up my story. I'm not interested in defaming anyone, and it's not overly important to me to even post the seller's name and company - I just want to warn others ahead of me to beware of what you're purchasing for the money you're expecting will buy you a certain amount of quality, before you commit yourselves.
