Muh Farm Truck Update

I bought a 1997 F-250 rear wheel drive truck for $1600. License and registration were another $200. Repairs total $2800 so far. I think there are a few more things I'd like to do so it's acceptably reliable, so all in, I'm at $4600 now, and will probably end up at about $5500.

Presuming the truck lasts at least a few years without any major repairs, cost per mile and per load of stuff moved should be pretty low--even a new engine or transmission wouldn't push it over an acceptable limit versus the use I'll get from it. One unanswerable question I have: had I spent $5000 up front would I have a more reliable/better vehicle, or would it also have $2000 worth of repairs to do? I presumed that was the case, but now I'm not sure.

Another strategy would be to do no repairs up front and just do them as they're needed--or just replace the truck--which is probably the more usual farm truck strategy.

As cars age components start to fail one by one, which is the reason an older car can be such a headache. That said it's trivially easy to get a broken car towed (at least over a short distance) and have it repaired compared to suffering new car depreciation and expense. For whatever reason, we tend to think of the car breakdown as a traumatic stressful event, while working hundreds of hours to pay for a new car is not traumatic.