MAKE ME AN OFFER

[boxcarOkie]

Been a slow week for me here on BCM, devoted a lot of time to working on my multiplication tables  (15% of Nuthin’=Nuthin’) and surfing the net.  Lot of advertisements about people selling their buses and/or coaches. 

Now with the market for buses in the tank, and the soft economy and all, well, this dog aint gonna hunt.  There are times I want to sell mine, I truly do.  I am sure you can relate to what I am saying here. 

When the new fuel filters are on, and it has lost its prime and it won’t start, that is a good time to think about selling it.  When you are stuck under the diferential of an old Eagle because your belly is too big and your overalls are creeping up and the material is really biting into your crotch ... well, make me an offer.

When it is extremely cold and all the fuel lines have frozen and the wrecker has not arrived, I think about selling it.  When I stand there at the fuel island and watch all those digit’s roll over and over, but the fill nozzle doesn’t seem to want to click of ... well you know the drill. 

When I am sharing the rear bedroom outside of Gadsden, Alabama, with every known skeeter in the world, because the generator won’t start ... Do I have a bidder, make me an offer.

Life as we know it is full of trade-offs. 

If I sold it I would not be able to appreciate the fundamental differences between depreciation and outright collector insanity.  Selling the bus would also free up the “where do I park this whale” issue, and I could buy something a tad bit smaller, like a used Aircraft Carrier. 

Being bus-less would severely reduce your ability to move hugh rocks in the parking lot of Cracker Barrel when making a blind right-hander.  If you sold it, you could buy a smart car that gets about 800 miles per gallon and get back out in the Fast Lane ... You remember the Fast Lane, right?

Think about it guys, if you sold your coach where would your wife store the sixty-nine pairs of shoes that she is taking to the old Greyhound bus meeting in Blytheville, Arkansas, next spring?  What would YOU do with the multiple tool boxes and spare parts you lug around the country in the summertime for back of the lot repairs and for ballast in the winter.

If you sold your bus, you would have clean fingernails, levis’s without holes in the knees, and your lower arm would not have a patchwork of skin colored Band-Aids and purple bruises.  You could actually go back to using your given name, instead of your super-secret-CB-code name.  You could put the pictures of the grandchildren back into your Droid and get rid of the .... “This is when I first got it” photo’s of the bus, sitting in someone’s back yard in Clovis, New Mexico.

It appears in my case the best thing to do is to hang onto it. 

It is paid for, it is ours, and I would be for the most part lost without it, we have bonded late into the night, that old bus and I.  If I did not have it there is the remote possibility I could lose touch with reality.  I would have nothing to do but chase little furry animals around the shop or sit alone at my workbench and look at the  photographs I've taken of myself late at night in my shop, wearing nothing but oven mitts and a tiara, while doing an out of body oil change experience .

To sell or not to sell ...This dilemma reaches far into the bus community, none of us are immune. 

No puddles of various liquids and lubriants on the shop floor, a totally new life void of the aroma of diesel exhaust early in the morning waiting on the air pump to come alive ... Well losing that collective edge, that is just plumb scary to some folks. 

Either way, it isn’t a pretty picture for any of us. 

Sometimes late at night, I silently wish that I could back up and start all over.  Now that I know better, the best way to travel.  But that is not gonna happen any time soon.  So I believe I will hang onto my old hoopie and ride it down like a tired old sick horse into the 21st Century.   

In a small way, I am glad I don’t have one point four million dollars to lay out on a used bus.  My life is complicated enough as it is.  And of course .... Life is always better for me ... when she has a place for her shoes.

Watch those Right-handers.

BCO

[scanzel]

Yea! Those right handers. I thought I missed but felt a thump and behold I clipped a telephone pole just enough to dent the cargo door and crush some of the cargo floor in just in front of the passenger side rear wheel. Not a cheap fix. I now look at what is out there already built and look at what I have invested in mine and I am not even done. Who new things would tank. But then again I am doing it the way we want not buying someone elses taste. Pink interior !! No way.

[boxcarOkie]

Yea! Those right handers. I thought I missed but felt a thump and behold I clipped a telephone pole just enough to dent the cargo door and crush some of the cargo floor in just in front of the passenger side rear wheel. Not a cheap fix. I now look at what is out there already built and look at what I have invested in mine and I am not even done. Who new things would tank. But then again I am doing it the way we want not buying someone elses taste. Pink interior !! No way.

GOOD FOR YOU! 

Sinatra made a million bucks singing "I did it my way."

BCO

[RnMAdventures]

Your article does ring true to some of my thoughts. My brother got me into this hobby (then sold his lol). I really enjoy working on and driving the bus, but it hasn't been a big hit with the family... not as much as I would have hoped. I had dreams of using it more than we do. I worry about it deteriating while i am not using it. ... and the storage cost are adding up.

I need ot learn how to RV correctly...

[travlinman]

Hmmmm..........Exactly more or less what I woke up thinking this morning as I contemplate my next post here on the board. Would my life be a lot simpler without this old bus?? Not sure. But for now on to the next repair!

Cheers

TM

[Len Silva]

Yea! Those right handers. I thought I missed but felt a thump and behold I clipped a telephone pole just enough to dent the cargo door and crush some of the cargo floor in just in front of the passenger side rear wheel. Not a cheap fix. I now look at what is out there already built and look at what I have invested in mine and I am not even done. Who new things would tank. But then again I am doing it the way we want not buying someone elses taste. Pink interior !! No way.

That's the advantage of having a Flxible bus, it just slithers around the corners.

[Oonrahnjay]

    Now, Oke, you're puttin' up all these posts about a rational view, about good sense, about looking at costs/depreciation/value, etc.  If I started thinkin' that way, I'd be out of the bus biddnizz and I'd have to reevaluate my whole life.   I think I'm gonna go find a crisp breakfast beer and lie down in a dark room for a bit.

[lvmci]

Hi All, if you don't want to sell it when its shinny and working good, then you have an emotional attachment to it,like a 57 t-bird or fixing up your first car. If you want to get rid of it when she's not working right, its an emotional attachment, like a son or daughter in puberty, or a wife in menopause. You think, " I can't take this anymore", but in fact your just blowing off steam. When you really want to get rid of things, is when you have a nonemotional detachment to it & don't care about the out come one way or another. Got rid of a girlfriend that way once. Having an attachment to an inanimate object is not wrong, as long as you get pleasure out of it once in awhile or pride in your work., lvmci...

[Lin]

BCO, from this and other posts I would gather that, in spite of the humor, the thought that you would rather not have the bus at present is always in the picture.  I feel the same way.  We really do not use it enough to shake that thought.  It does seem that I literally work on it more than drive it; most of that work being totally non-essential.  That is not to say I would not be working on something anyway.  When my bus was visiting Don in Bakersfield for a year, I worked on some metal projects that others politely call "art".  They are installed around the property.  If all of my work incentive was not used up on the bus, the property would be covered with similar projects at a lesser cost.  Of course, that assumes that they would not be in MoMA.  On the other hand, some could say that having the bus at least keeps my "creativity" confined to one relatively small place rather than polluting the whole environment with eye sores.

[Cary and Don]

Since most of us own forty year old buses,  depreciation is a mute question.  What's another five years on top of forty?  We have now entered the world of the "collector" vehicle.

I know a guy who puts his money in expensive rare collector cars when the economy goes south.  He says it's a better bet than anything else.  You only need one buyer someday down the road.  They will only appreciate and have a better return than the stock market.  From the way he lives,  I think he might be right.

Things will turn around,  they always do.

Don and Cary

[boxcarOkie]

I have to admit, I was expecting far worse.  Here lately I have been swimming in some deep water over in Off Topic and I figured I would be up to my ears in it here, but pleasantly find, it is not so.  This is what it is all supposed to be about, the free and open exhange of information.  Kudo’s for a job well done boys.

Put my response in one reply.

Yea! Those right handers. I thought I missed but felt a thump and behold I clipped a telephone pole just enough to dent the cargo door and crush some of the cargo floor in just in front of the passenger side rear wheel. Not a cheap fix. I now look at what is out there already built and look at what I have invested in mine and I am not even done. Who new things would tank. But then again I am doing it the way we want not buying someone elses taste. Pink interior !! No way.

Have not done any structural damage in a long time.  Cracker Barrel seems to get me all the time, they have a tendency to get a little bit skinny when I am in there.  Took out a stop sign with a truck once, and there was a guy on here that nailed a fire extinguisher in SF a couple of years ago.

Thanks for your reply,

BCO

Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #3 on: Today at 04:14:32 AM »
Quote

Your article does ring true to some of my thoughts. My brother got me into this hobby (then sold his lol). I really enjoy working on and driving the bus, but it hasn't been a big hit with the family... not as much as I would have hoped. I had dreams of using it more than we do. I worry about it deteriating while i am not using it. ... and the storage cost are adding up.

I need ot learn how to RV correctly...

At least you have a villain to blame it on (your brother) I am the dumba** that got myself into this predicament, no one to blame but myself.  The thing that surprises me the most is standing there in the fuel line at the Flyin’ Hooker and easily handing over 5 fresh Dead Presidents and thinking nothing of it.  I mean, jeeze Louise, I can remember working a long time in the rain for cash like that.  Now I just fork it over like it is nothing.

Thanks for your comment,

BCO

Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #4 on: Today at 07:25:06 AM »
Quote

Hmmmm..........Exactly more or less what I woke up thinking this morning as I contemplate my next post here on the board. Would my life be a lot simpler without this old bus?? Not sure. But for now on to the next repair!
Cheers
TM[/color][/i]

Having been in this for quite sometime, I often find myself wondering who, what, where, when and why of it all?  And like most of you, there are no easy answers.  There are cheaper ways to travel and certainly we have all thought about doing it over, I am not sure if I would (on the second go around) go with a bus.  But then again, this is my third bus.

Thank you for your insight on the subject,

BCO

Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #5 on: Today at 08:04:24 AM »
Quote

Quote from: scanzel on Today at 03:40:30 AM
Yea! Those right handers. I thought I missed but felt a thump and behold I clipped a telephone pole just enough to dent the cargo door and crush some of the cargo floor in just in front of the passenger side rear wheel. Not a cheap fix. I now look at what is out there already built and look at what I have invested in mine and I am not even done. Who new things would tank. But then again I am doing it the way we want not buying someone elses taste. Pink interior !! No way.

That's the advantage of having a Flxible bus, it just slithers around the corners.

And it is only what?  36ft bumper to bumper, is that right?  Definitely a plus especially if you are in some of the National Parks that were designed for vech. of the fifties and before.

Thanks for checking in

BCO

Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #6 on: Today at 08:15:11 AM »
Quote

    Now, Oke, you're puttin' up all these posts about a rational view, about good sense, about looking at costs/depreciation/value, etc.  If I started thinkin' that way, I'd be out of the bus biddnizz and I'd have to reevaluate my whole life.   I think I'm gonna go find a crisp breakfast beer and lie down in a dark room for a bit.

I just like to add to the mix every now and then, make it interesting.  Point out the sublime and the ridiculous, this practice unfortunately will often not bring out the best in people.  But what the hey?  You chum the waters you just naturally gotta expect a shark or two to show up, right?

Breakfast beer? ... Uh, pass.

BCO

Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #7 on: Today at 08:19:20 AM »
Quote

Hi All, if you don't want to sell it when its shinny and working good, then you have an emotional attachment to it,like a 57 t-bird or fixing up your first car. If you want to get rid of it when she's not working right, its an emotional attachment, like a son or daughter in puberty, or a wife in menopause. You think, " I can't take this anymore", but in fact your just blowing off steam. When you really want to get rid of things, is when you have a nonemotional detachment to it & don't care about the out come one way or another. Got rid of a girlfriend that way once. Having an attachment to an inanimate object is not wrong, as long as you get pleasure out of it once in awhile or pride in your work., lvmci...

Now this one I found interesting, “the emotional attachment” angle, never really stopped to consider that.  It could very well be true, when you stop to think of how it is that each and everyone of us (myself included here) give the beast a name.

My favorite all time name for a bus was “Driving Miss Lazy” I always got a kick out of that.

Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #8 on: Today at 08:49:30 AM »
Quote

BCO, from this and other posts I would gather that, in spite of the humor, the thought that you would rather not have the bus at present is always in the picture.  I feel the same way.  We really do not use it enough to shake that thought.  It does seem that I literally work on it more than drive it; most of that work being totally non-essential.  That is not to say I would not be working on something anyway.  When my bus was visiting Don in Bakersfield for a year, I worked on some metal projects that others politely call "art".  They are installed around the property.  If all of my work incentive was not used up on the bus, the property would be covered with similar projects at a lesser cost.  Of course, that assumes that they would not be in MoMA.  On the other hand, some could say that having the bus at least keeps my "creativity" confined to one relatively small place rather than polluting the whole environment with eye sores.

You know Lin, I would be less than candid if I did not agree with you. 

It is often at best “a love/hate relationship” and that is fact.  I suppose in a way I miss the trips to Montana in the summertime (we did that every year for seven years) and wandering around the country, putting down the miles.  We are down to about 5K per year (did a little over that this year, in four trips or outtings) and that kind of sucks.

I can learn from your experience, last year for instance, I dug and built a pond in the rear of my property.  Unfortunatly, it did not hold water very long (needs a liner) so now I have this huge hole in the yard, and then it is about the same width and length as a bus .... and uh .... I will be back.

Thanks,

BCO


Re: MAKE ME AN OFFER
« Reply #9 on: Today at 09:06:30 AM »
Quote

Since most of us own forty year old buses,  depreciation is a mute question.  What's another five years on top of forty?  We have now entered the world of the "collector" vehicle.

I know a guy who puts his money in expensive rare collector cars when the economy goes south.  He says it's a better bet than anything else.  You only need one buyer someday down the road.  They will only appreciate and have a better return than the stock market.  From the way he lives,  I think he might be right.

Things will turn around,  they always do.

Don and Cary

Well I surely hope you are right, kind of like that old coon hunting story, where the guy is way up in the tree with this very angry coon, and he tells his partner, “Shoot!  Shoot up here amongst us!” and his partner says to him, “Naw, I caint do that, I might hit ya’s.”  And the partner replies, “Well shoot anyway, ONE of us needs some relief!”

Thanks to all of you for your replies to the post and your well written comments.

BCO

[robertglines1]

How Questionable is my intelligence? on 4th build.

[luvrbus]

Best part of owning a bus you never need to worry about what the banks are paying for money market,cd's or saving accounts

[Kevinmc5]

Just last night the better half and I where thinking about selling the bus. Only got to go out in it once this year. Last year went across the US just getting it home. Some of the best times we have ever had.  Its nice to know even you old timers think about selling it once in awhile. Then the in laws come over and I really enjoy the space and separation. If you know what I mean.


Kevin

[eagle19952]

the interest on a half million dollar cd/savings would barely buy a round trip ticket to the bank....