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Too many miles?
My wife and I are ready to jump into the Prevost Coach world. We found a Marathon Coach that has our dream floor plan, year model and converter. The negative; coach has 200K miles on it. From my reads, I understand this is nothing for a Prevost Coach and Volvo engines. When we elect to move into a newer coach, how long will the it take me to sell the H3 and what kind of discount will I need to give to move it or can I even sell it? The current owner has had this coach on the market for a very long time.
Well, I just closed on another aircraft transaction, mostly due to the aircraft low total time and great maintenance. As much as I hate to possibly miss out on some good coaches that have higher mileage, we are going to go with the newer X3-45 for our first coach. I want to thank all of you for the feedback. Was happy to see how many people reach this and is a good source of help and information. We will keep all posted on our new to us coach purchase.
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19 Replies
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Prevost have a million mile engine life and 20 year chassis life expectancy in Commercial use.
The more you use them the less trouble you will have.
Chuck
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I’ll be breaking 200k miles tomorrow. Bought it with like 193k and wasn’t concerned at all. Banks however were very concerned and luckily I found a local lender that wasn’t just trying to check boxes.
Mileage is just one piece and low mileage is just as dangerous as high mileage. With all this economic uncertainty I have a feeling resale value will be a lot less.
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With all the economic uncertainly we may all be living in our coaches full time in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Chuck
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Agreeing with Chuck on the Walmart life.
For on highway engines sitting is worse than using. 200k wouldn’t bother me at all, even for a working tractor. The lowest mileage we’ve ever lost an engine is 741k and that’s in extreme heavy haul use (225k # loads regularly).
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Thank you everyone for your comments. The limited options for bank loans is the one that scares me most, limits my ability to sell the coach as fewer people have the ability to pay cash. Love the immediate response from members.
More to come.
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You didn’t mention if the current owner is asking a ridiculous price for said coach. Perhaps that is the reason it’s not selling. It appears to me, coaches around the 150-250k mark are selling no problem. I assume this coach is much higher than that which limits the potential buyers.
Back in Jan when I was looking, I couldn’t jump on one fast enough before it was gone. I’m lucky to have found this one and was the first to jump on it.
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Falcon Jet,
Most people worry about buying one before worrying about selling one. It is something to consider but what you ask does not have an answer at this time.
A couple things in your questions need better clarity to answer. You said you found the perfect floor plan and it’s a Marathon conversion you said it was an H. You say Volvo motor so its newer than 2011?
Later
bv
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The coach is a 2010 H3-45 Double slide with bunks. The original ask was 699K, now down to 515K.
My business is purchasing and selling business jets, hence the sell concerns. In our business we cant give away a business jet with high time. Like the diesel coaches, these jets are designed to fly for 50,000 plus hours. Unfortunately, buyers do not see that value and look at the aircraft like cars, desiring the lower hour options.
I think the ask price is reasonable, we just know for a fact we will want to get into a newer coach in the future and would like a rough idea of what number will work to move it when that time comes.
Best, Ed
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we need to have the Marathon bus number to get any history. It will be a 4 digit number around 1100.
Later
bv
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I know which bus it is, I’m checking.
Later
bv
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A lot of buyers fail to recognize that a 13 year old coach with 30,000 miles may be a bigger maintenance nightmare than one with 300,000 miles.
These are commercial buses designed to run over 100,000 miles per year and have a life well in excess of a million miles. Keeping everything exercised avoids a lot of issues resulting from components that don’t move regularly and rubber components that age out. Tires last much longer if exercised. It is likely true the same thing applies to other items ranging from air bags to Norgren valves to brake chamber diaphragms.
But it is a waste of time trying to explain that to a buyer.
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Agreed, Low miles is what people want.
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At one time that was Birdman’s Tour Bus.
Cash Money Records.
Later
bv
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Good topic that comes up from time to time. The appraisal profession calls this “paired sale analysis” … find two identical coaches (fat chance) that are exactly the same EXCEPT for mileage. One has low to modest miles and the other has what appears to be high mileage for its vintage. What is the difference in price? What in theory should be “value” of low versus high miles? If reliable detailed information and sales prices on all Prevost coach sales was deposited and we could search that database, we could probably come up with a number.
Should the higher mileage coach sell for a lower price, all things being equal? Intuitively … yes. How much? I don’t know. A huge amount, I don’t think so. A tiny amount, probably not. Will a high mileage coach take longer to sell, maybe. Maybe not if its reasonably priced, well cared for, and has little to no deferred maintenance.
We bought a 1999 coach in 2014 (when it was 15 years old) and had 72,000 miles. Now we have a 1999 coach in 2023 that is 24 years old and has 133,000 miles. I often read that its difficult to finance a coach that’s more than 10 years old. Am I worried? Am I wringing my hands and clutching my pearls? No. This ain’t no plastic, sticks ‘n staples RV that has a barely adequate engine. I’m encouraged by the active market for late 80’s, early to mid 90’s coaches.
I would be more concerned about mileage on my coach if I was planning on putting 40,000 to 60,000 miles a year on it. But with the miles most of us put on our coaches I don’t think miles are that big of a deal.
Factor a reasonable amount of price discount into the higher mileage coach, have the coach thorough inspected, and enjoy it. If you’re still hung up on the higher miles, move onto a different coach.
I think miles and age are more concerning to first time Prevost coaches and once they move on to coach #2 and #3 that concern fades.
2000 Featherlite H3-45
2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Leesburg, FL
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