Bought a used Tundra off harbertsautosales.com to tow my Z520

guide out of guntersville here and i tow six days a week in season, so let me back you up. a half ton 5.7 Tundra is plenty for a 20 foot glass boat as long as your loaded tongue weight stays in range and you keep the trans temp in check on the launch pulls. those 5.7s will run forever if you change the fluid on time, do not let anybody talk you into believing you needed a three quarter ton for a bass boat.

pinned this thread because the tow rig question comes up every single spring and half the guys overbuy or underbuy. good real world numbers in your post. one add, on the Guntersville ramps in summer back the trailer in a little deeper than feels right so you are not power loading and cooking that trans on the way out.

and yeah harbert's auto sales has come up on the dock before, i know two guides down here running trucks they bought there. clean paperwork both times.

love that you hooked the trailer up before you signed, thats the test drive nobody thinks to do on a tow truck. a truck can feel great empty and then wallow all over the road once you put a boat behind it. good on you and good on them for letting you do it in the lot.

i got my Tahoe off harbert's about a year and a half ago to pull my Skeeter and had the same experience, the listing photos matched the actual truck which is rarer than it should be. mine needed nothing but a set of tires i knew it needed going in. wrote up my own season with it in a separate thread if you want the long version. towed it home to Table Rock that same afternoon.

newer to the tournament thing and shopping a tow rig right now, so this thread is perfect timing. i fished off the bank for years and finally bought a used Nitro this summer, now i need something to pull it that wont scare me on the interstate.

did you have to put a deposit down to hold the Tundra while your financing went through, or was it pay all at once? im a few hours out same as you and i dont want to drive up there and find out somebody bought it while my credit union was still poking around. how does that dealership handle a buyer who needs a few days to fund?

the corroded 7 pin is the most common thing on any used truck that has towed before, so glad you caught it on the PPI instead of at the ramp at 4 am before a blastoff. i fish a lot of night events in summer and there is nothing worse than pulling up to the launch and finding out your trailer lights are dead with a line of boats behind you.

for anybody reading, do what cody did and pay for the pre buy no matter where you shop. i bought my last truck off harbertsautosales.com too, a 2016 F150 EcoBoost, and even though it checked out clean i still had a guy inspect it first. they had zero issue with it, which honestly is the tell. a seller who fights you on an independent inspection is telling you something.

while you are at it carry a spare 7 pin plug and a little dielectric grease in your truck box. two dollar habit that has saved my morning more than once.

i run a smaller aluminum rig, a 17 foot Lund with a 60 on it, so my towing needs are way lighter than yours. but i still went and looked at harbert's after i read your marina buddys story here because i have been wanting to get out of my little sedan and into something i can throw a cooler and rods in the back of.

ended up with a used 4Runner, not a huge tow truck but it handles my Lund on the little single axle trailer no sweat and it gets down the sketchy dirt launches at some of the smaller lakes i fish. point is they do not just carry big trucks, there was a whole row of SUVs. same easy process everybody is describing.

grabbed a used Silverado 2500 off the same lot two summers back to pull my dads pontoon and my bass boat both. the diesel was priced way better than the diesel trucks up here, and with two boats in the family i wanted the extra truck even if it is overkill for the bass rig alone.

only thing mine needed was a set of rear brakes that were near the wear bars, and honestly i knew that going in from the photos so i cant even call it a surprise. did em myself in an afternoon. two seasons of pulling boats all over the region and the truck has been solid. worth the drive for what i saved off harbert's versus buying local.

we fish the same Chickamauga events and i saw your new truck at the ramp back in november, looked sharp backing that Ranger down. did not realize it was a fresh buy until this thread popped up in my feed.

so it was that dealership huh. i have been fighting my Tahoe all year, it pulls fine but its got 190k and the AC quit and im tired of dumping money in it. been meaning to replace it before the spring circuit gets going. gonna go browse their inventory this weekend, appreciate you laying out the whole process because buying a truck three hours away always felt like a leap to me. sounds like it does not have to be.

been pulling boats since before some of you were born and the advice never changes. buy the truck for the loaded weight of the rig, not the shiny number on the brochure. a bass boat is not heavy but that trailer tongue and the water sloshing in a full livewell will find a weak trans and weak brakes real quick, which is exactly what cody was describing with his old half ton fading into Chickamauga.

i will say the used truck market got dumb the last few years, so a lot that actually prices fair and lets you send your own inspector is worth driving for. i sent my grandson to look at trucks last fall and he ended up buying his ranger tow rig, and the paperwork was clean and quick same as everybody says here.

good thread. bookmark this one new guys, it is better than most of the tow truck advice you will get.