Tacoma Maintenance Costs

I spent some time building a maintenance spreadsheet so that I could budget for maintenance costs for my truck. After fleshing it out, I was amazed at how much it really costs to maintain a vehicle. I've been really anal about doing the maintenance on my truck before an issues arises. With 160,000 miles on my 2003 Tacoma, it has yet to leave me stranded anywhere, anytime.

I've heard many people on forums, friends, family discuss purchasing a "beater" in order to keep miles off of their "nice" vehicle and to get better mileage "saving money." However, the spreadsheet that I built has made me fully aware of exactly how expensive it would be to own a secondary vehicle for daily driving.

Considering the cost of the purchase of the second vehicle, plus maintenance costs, I've found that more often than not...it is very difficult to ever come out financially ahead on buying a second vehicle.

If anyone wants a copy of the Excel spreadsheet, just send me a PM with your email address and I'll email it to you.

The summary is this for a standard Tacoma:

$8,100 in maintenance for 200,000 miles of driving.

I'm sure your first thought is BS.

Let me break it down a little further: If you drive 20,000 miles per year, that comes out to $67 per month (sound more reasonable now?).

Please note, this doesn't include repair costs for crap like a new outside mirror because your 33x12.50 slung a rock through it.

The way I have worked it, I break each maintenance item down based on how many occurrences your will encounter per 100,000 miles.

 

I would be interested in seeing your spreadsheet. I have a 2003 Hyundai Accent that I daily drive 102 miles roundtrip to work. It gets an avg 39 mpg and maintenance costs are very low. I only run liability insurance, which totals $89 every 6 months. I just put new tires on it for $169 out the door, the last tires got me 60k. It is sooooo cheap to run, and I can't stand the thought of putting all those useless, highway miles on my pretty 4wd. But like I said, I would like to see your spreadsheet to see if I am really saving any money. And even if I'm not.....I like the idea of my Tacoma sitting in the garage all day while my $2,000 daily driver gets rock chips all over it.

 

In his case^^^ putting 102 miles a day thats a good deal , but just to buy an econo box for saving gas for in town short trips is a waste of money, after you figure initial cost, gas,insurance,maintance,plates,taxes. My brother in law was going to spend 15K on a econobox, I talked him out of it, saving you can buy alot of gas for 15K+ other expense's. He has a lot of cash and is a cheap bastard, doesn't want to put miles on his 2010 Ranger.

 

Yeah 15k for a commuter is ridiculous. Like I said I bought my gas saver for $2k (a friend deal) with 80k on the clock and am now at 212K! Hyundai's are actually a good little machine.

 

I am at $0.97 per mile. All costs included, i.e. gas, maintenance, monthly payments, insurance, registration, and whatever add-ons there is on it.

Method of tracking: Total expense divided by total miles. The data is on my expense log, which includes my everyday expense so I can't quite share it.

 

I think your figures are way to low for that many miles.

Unless your just doing the minimum maintenance

Have you figured labor costs ??

I have 4 vehicles for just myself