Buying a Thomas... Question

[VinDaddy10]

It’s a 2008 Thomas. It’s a flat nose with a front mounted engine. It’s 35 feet long. It runs smooth. It’s a 5.9 Cummins with a Alison 2000. Surprisingly, it only has 37k miles. He’s asking $6000. It’s not publicly listed, so it’s just been sitting for a while. Is that to much? It seems like a decent price. Also, they will deliver it to me (3 hrs away)

[musigenesis]

Post-2003 buses tend to have problems with the emissions control devices, which are unreliable and (very) expensive to fix.

[Sehnsucht]

Yes that's too much asking price and also with such low mileage I'd be concerned why it's so low. The red flag there may be that it's had persistent unresolved problems so was unreliable which is why it was basically parked until they could unload it on an unsuspecting novice.

[VinDaddy10]

It was owned by a church. So they only used a couple times a week on a short route. Then they stopped using it altogether and sold it to a daycare. Now the school is strapped, because of COVID. I’m mainly concerned about the Emissions issue. How difficult or expensive Of an issue is it?

[VinDaddy10]

How much is “very expensive”?

[CaptSquid]

go to your nearest Cummins dealer and ask.

[Sehnsucht]

Nothing about the nature of an emissions-equipped engine implies that it's inherently problematic, it's just that if or probably more accurately when problems begin they will not be cheap fixes. Beyond the mechanics of how emissions systems work there's also a whole network of electronics to monitor the system and derate or disable the vehicle if the system faults or attempted to disable it. With 37k miles I doubt there's much chance it's even seen enough miles to be at risk of imminent costly failure. The expensive scheduled maintenance usually comes after a couple hundred thousand miles. I'd still be a little cautious about the suspiciously low miles. I understand it was a church bus then a daycare bus but they often don't keep up with routine maintenance either due to cost or just no one taking ownership of the responsibility. If they can provide maintenance records that would go a long way towards alleviating that concern for me.