Meet Grillin N Chillin: Buying our First Food Truck

It has been more than a month from our last lead, but eventually, Craigslist came through again. This listing was for a 16' "almost new" trailer crammed full of useful equipment. The owner had just lowered the price from $80k to $60k. Still well above what we wanted to spend, but I called the owner, anyway.

He told me lots about the trailer. It had been custom made for him in 2016 (less than 2 years ago) by a well-respected local (Phoenix) builder for $95,000(!!). Food Trucking was just something he had always wanted to do, but now he wanted to go back to his old job as a banker. He needed to cash-out his investors and could not carry. Another deal on it had just fallen through at $60k.

I told him we had cash but that his price was out of our budget.  He asked if we would be more interested if he could drop the price "significantly".  I said "Maybe" and that I would like to come down and see it. He said "sure" and we set up a time for a few days later.

In the meantime, I connected with the trailer builder Pat from Stratabella in Phoenix, who confirmed all the information the owner had given me.  He seemed genuinely nice and was very helpful, saying he'd be happy to check the trailer out and could do any modifications we might want to have made, when the time came.

We met as planned at the storage yard where the trailer was being parked. One tire was very low, but the outside looked in solid shape. 

He opened it up, and I was impressed. Lots of like-new equipment, plenty of refrigeration, good layout. 

I poked around, asked lots of questions and told him we were 100% serious and ready to buy, had been looking at other possibilities, but were also in no hurry.

He seemed eager to sell and kept pressing for an offer. I told him that his asking price was fair, but just not in our budget. I really liked the trailer, but it was out of our league. He still kept pressing, so I finally told him our budget was $40k. He looked like he would be sick. 

"You can't do any better at all?", he asked.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think we can".

(Sigh) "Well, I'll talk to my partners and let you know what they say."

So I left, a little shell-shocked that we were still in the running for this unit, and headed back to the ranch.

The next day, the trailer owner called. He said his partners just could not come down to our price. (I was not surprised). BUT, he said, if you can come up to $45k, we have a deal. (from $80k to $45k? Ok, now I WAS surprised!!)

"Wow. I don't know if we can swing that." I told him "Let me see if I can get Kathryn to go for it."

She said, "Yes". We'd already discussed the possibility of coming up a bit more, both realizing what a great deal it was.  When I called him back, told him we had a deal IF they could do it for $44k and he accepted!  So we made an appointment to go complete the purchase and take the title a few days later.

The transaction went fairly smoothly (banks can be so fussy to work with), and by noon we were the proud new owners of an awesome little almost-new mobile food kitchen. The whole search and purchase had taken less than 6 weeks!  I guess it was just meant to be.

On my way home with our new food trailer!