Still Shopping for Wheels

A buddy of mine has been keeping an eye out for a tow vehicle for me. He noticed there were a couple of vans for sale at the Mt. Washington Auto Road.

These are the vans the company used to take passengers up to the top of the mountain. There are some pros and cons to that. The obvious downside is the fact that they are driving up and down the largest mountain in the Northeast all day.

On the plus side, since they don’t want to fly off a cliff and plunge down into the Great Gulf Wilderness, they are well maintained. They are also only driven during the summer months, so that limits wear and tear a bit. One of the neat things about these vans is that they have special low gear ratios for the slow mountain trip. When they are put back on the market, the original road gears are reinstalled.

The large vans were in great shape, too great a shape for me. The price was way out of my budget. By the way, while we missed getting snow, there was fresh snow on the ground at the base of the Auto Road. It’s several hundred feet higher than where I live and that made all the difference.

In our travels we did come across a van owned by an electrical company. They’ve moved away from residential work into more commercial projects. Because of that their old vans have been replaced by much larger vehicles.

I’ve got my eye on their Ford F250 work van. It’s basically a big empty box. That’s a plus for me as it’s a blank slate that I could do something creative with. The towing capacity is very good. While the van lacks a hitch, that’s not necessarily all bad. At least the van hasn’t been used to tow big heavy things over the years. It’s not that hard to put a good hitch on.

Now if only I could get the price down a bit. Doesn’t hurt to ask.

We really hadn’t planned on vehicle shopping, but since we needed to go into town anyway, we made a day of it.

-Sixbears