It's become ridiculous.

My daily driver Silverado is 15 years old and 185K miles. Still runs great. But the body is slowly starting to go. It's an LT.......but besides power windows, A/C and a power driver seat, it's not full of crazy options. To replace it with new would run $47k - $50k !!!!!!!!!!! To replace it with a truck 5 years old and with 75k miles starts at $30k !!!!!!

Ridiculous.

I'm running on borrowed time on my daily driver. One thing for sure when it comes time to buy I ain't buying new. I can easily afford to but I hate all the junk on new vehicles.

I'd buy a new truck 3/4 ton, manual trans, no power anything, no A/C, no carpets, a bench seat, 8ft box, 2wd and standard cab. Should run about 25K I would think at most. Nobody makes a simple plain truck anymore. Base line trucks come with too much junk on them.

So instead I'm thinking of buying a used older truck something like 67-72. I can find a relatively rust free one like I mentioned above cause they were common place back then.
Prices for a decent one are 10-15K. I can add better brakes and EFI along with fixing up some minor stuff for about 10K. All in I'd be less than 25K for a nice simple vehicle.

I'd bet it get as good as gas mileage as a new truck, should be able to get approx 20 mpg. Had a buddy back in the day with a '72 chevy 350 quadrajet, 4 speed that did 20mpg when driven easy.

It'll last me the rest of my lifetime and I won't need to go near a dealer. I feel like a need to get home and take a shower after visiting any dealership.

I really liked all the nice things on my dodge. Didn’t use the backup camera much but the heated seats and steering wheel felt nice after checking traps in negative temps. Bluetooth is a must in my vehicles, you can keep your crappy public radio stations. But we traded it for a suburban since our family outgrew the pickup.

My next truck is in the shop now getting worked on. Instead of buying new i told my dad to look out for an older cheap pickup I can beat up in the hills. He found a 2005 dodge 3/4 ton crew cab, it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles my other truck had, but it has Bluetooth and AC so that’s alright. Straight body, no rust. The guy selling it thought the motor was shot cause it ran rough when idling, got it for $1,000. Dad thinks it’s just a vacuum leak so he’s got a gasket kit ordered. We will see if that works. If not we have a spare motor for it layin around so we will just pop that one in and call it good.

If you don’t like having nice things, just buy an old truck and fix it

I've got to disagree with you Dave - those ol' Dodges are awesome!