I was wholesaling cars for a while, and I made a name for myself as the “big ugly truck guy.” And it started with a really ugly one. And pretty big one too.

I was at a new car dealership I used to trade with. I bought their trade-ins they didn’t want to re-condition and resell and sometimes sold them a late model used car of their brand. On the weekends I would hang out there sometimes. I’d BS with the desk/GM guy and when they got busy I would lend a hand if I could, mostly by looking at the trade-ins when they’d get a car deal. Sometimes I’d wind up making a nice buy on a car so it was worth it to sit around telling car guy jokes and waiting for a thousand dollar commish to fall in my lap on a Sunday afternoon.

I was there one Sunday. They weren’t really busy, but one the guys had a deal and his customers were trying to trade an old truck, so my buddy figured I may as well be the guy to go look at it because I would probably be the one to buy it. I did go look. It was a monstrosity. It was an old Ford one and a half ton tow truck. The hook part had been removed and a make-shift flatbed put on it, and then a series of welded tubes on it to make a frame and rack. It was mostly dirty white except for the red rust places which was spotted pretty much at every corner and in between. It had dual rear wheels, all rusty and muddy, and big truck wheels up front, also rusty and muddy. It was four-wheel drive and was lifted high in the air; like “step-ladder-to-get-in-it” high. It did have 6 good, huge tires, and some of the glass was uncracked, and it ran. It probably ran really good. It had a Holley carb on top of a pretty massive manifold and headers sticking out of the wheel wells. It was absolutely smog proof and illegal from bumper to bumper. I didn’t drive it. I looked it over and went inside. I had no idea what it was worth.

I asked my buddy how much they needed to make their car deal and he snickered and gave me the sense that there was no way they were gonna make the deal. I was ready to go, so I told him if it helped him I’d pay $2500 for it. This was quite a few years ago and at that time that was a lot of money for a truck you couldn’t smog and resell. And I left.

I did my early Monday morning stop there the next day. I would always drive in and cruise through their trade-in section so I had an idea of what might be available for sale before I went inside and when I did, there was the truck, and another wholesaler was looking at it. I had since decided I didn’t really want the truck for $2500, seemed it might be a loser to sell that ugly ass old thing at the auction which is the only place I had to sell it. I was glad to see someone else on it.

I talked to my guy there about a couple of other cars. The other wholesaler came in the office and dropped the keys to the truck on the manager’s desk and said he didn’t want it. We joked about the damned thing and he left. Now, I was kind of worried. If I did have to buy it now, I had to get it to the auction which was a good fifty miles away. I didn’t want to drive it, and I didn’t really want my old guy drivers to drive it either.

My friend asked me if I would pay four grand for it and started explaining how he had to stretch to make his deal. There was my out and I told him I really didn’t even want to buy it for twenty-five hundred, I’d just been trying to help him out. We did our business on the other cars he had and I left. That truck stayed there. It was weeks and still, there it sat in the wholesale line. There were at least ten wholesalers who had passed on the truck and all the time other cars were coming and going as they took them in trade and wholesaled them to guys like me.

After a couple of months, I was in there selling him a car and trying to buy a couple. He tried me on the truck again. Once again, I told him I didn’t really want it, but since I had told him twenty-five before I said I would do that if it helped him out. His boss, the owner of the store was in the office and we were all laughing at the truck and they were crying the blues about how much they were losing on that deal. It was a good pitch, but I really didn’t want the truck. They sold it to me for the twenty-five.

I don’t remember who, but one of my guys drove it to the auction. It sounded good and he said it ran good and, of course, ran all over the road, there was a bit of slop. You could turn the steering wheel a quarter turn before it actually did anything. I had the auction detail shop, knock the major dirt off it, paint the wheels with light gray Rustoleum paint and slop some tire dressing on it, and put it out on the lot for the sale.

Imagine a parking lot you can barely see the ends of, and that’s what the lot at the auction looks like. When I got to the auction I could see the truck way out there in the back forty sticking up out of the early morning haze. Big ugly truck in a sea of cars.

It ran through the auction line fairly early. When the cars approach the block they are in a slow-moving line and there were guys all over it. Looking under, climbing up on it, tugging on stuff. One guy even crawled up on the front bumper, opened the hood, and revved the motor up. It sounded really good and the tires looked stupendous, it was almost a nice ugly all of a sudden for me.

I had the truck in for “pure sell” which means there was no minimum bid required, you bid, you win, it’s yours. The owner of the store where I bought it from was there and he followed the truck into the block and found me and we stood together and watched it go. It started at $2500 and when it was done and the smoke cleared it sold for over five grand.

I was ecstatic, the owner of the store where I bought it was visibly surprised and a bit miffed I think, but he shook my hand and told me no one else thought the truck was worth even twenty-five hundred and congratulated me for taking a swing.

Sometimes I swung and missed too. Stay tuned for that.

See more stories like this at Cartoons