If The Odometer Reading Is 40,000 Miles On Your Car And You Have: Fill & Download for Free

I must have walked out of twenty car dealers before I was done.I had been driving junk cars my whole life and I never paid more than $200 for any of them. I’d put 100,000 (sometimes hair-raising) miles on them before they gave up the ghost. In college after class let out on Friday afternoon, I’d light out across the mountains because the fiance was stationed only 7 hours away, and if I budgeted correctly, I’d have just enough gas to get all the way there on fumes. No credit cards, no cell phones, no way for him to come look for me if I got in trouble since I had the only car between us, all of it crazy risky, but what did I know? It was love.Years after that, I had graduated, I was older, only a little wiser, and back home again. I had a brand-spanking-new REAL job (benefits, oh, my!), a brand-new life, brand-new (to me) house, and my latest junker was in a ditch with Xs in her headlamps. She was dead-dead-dead. My brand-new boss (who hired me after 6 months with the company as a Kelly-girl temp, so he KNEW me when he hired me and knew my changing-but-improving personal situation) my new boss said he could understand being late twice in 2 weeks as my latest junker gave her last gasps. But I needed to fix my transportation woes. ASAP.Check, boss.I started the hunt every night after work, every day on the weekend. I’d borrowed a family car. I got “little ladied” too many times to count. I got do-si-doed when I said up front, I am only looking and I will NOT sign or make a penny on a deposit today. I got the run around, “You said on the phone you had one!” I walk, walk, walked.I was picky. And I was specific. I was looking for a BASE truck, 1-2-year-old, low-mileage, SMALL-sized, manual-transmission, nothing fancy. B-A-S-I-C. I needed to put 100 miles a day on it commuting. I planned on running it into the ground. But AC and cloth seats were good because vinyl in the southern summers can raise blisters on the back of your thighs. That’s it. How hard could it be? Sheesh, I had no idea.Mom and my aunt and I scoured newspapers and car sheets and called dealers and talked to everyone we knew. It was a family project. And I had so much disappointment on this fruitless search.A cousin and car salesman who flat out LIED to me about the truck being wrecked but didn’t have the brains to hide the overspray on the windshield replacement, the clunk on a hard left turn, or the big ole dent in the center back of the cab. “But wasn’t it fun to drive?” he asked. I walked out.The Ford dealers who little ladied me even AFTER I asked them to stop. Buh-bye.The Nissan dealers who couldn’t understand the ‘I’m not financing’ part of the conversation, even after I repeated it three times. (Family loan, none of their business.) C’ya.“I want a base truck, nothing extra that’s gonna break anyway.”“Look at these leather, bucket seats with electric adjusters and lumbar support.”Adios.At another dealer, “Base truck.”“Electronic locks.”Sayonara.At another dealer, “Base. Truck.”“Heated side-view mirrors.”Screw this.Meanwhile I started to realize the NEW price, with dealer rebates, on a little Toyota truck was very close to the price of a 2yo Toyota with 40,000 miles.Color me stupid, but that sounds like a new plan. I scheduled a Saturday and mapped out dealers all over East Tennessee, Toyotas and several used car lots, just to make sure. I had a map, I had a plan, here, there, and yon, and away we go.We, as in my nephew who was 3 years old. I was “saddled” with him for the day because his mother was getting remarried the next day and the other women in my family were all in a dither getting ready. He was underfoot. And I figured the better part of valor was to get the hell away from those crazy women and take Drewski with me. We headed out bright and early. His deal was we had to go to a McDonald’s play land between every dealer stop. Thirteen hours later I was ready to chew nails.Lies, lies, and more lies. The first Toyota dealer wouldn’t even walk me over to the little trucks, I needed the new T1000 full-sized — wait, come back!Not this chick.I figured if you lied to me before you got my money, the lies would never stop.I had so much Mickey D’s sweet tea, I was jittery with caffeine. And a tad impatient.“Just one more, Drewski.”He was sulled up at that point. I was pretty sulled up myself.Walked into the last Toyota dealer and said, “We have had a very, long day. I have spent two weeks looking at every dealership in East Tennessee. I have been little ladied until I am ready to rip off someone’s arm and beat him unconscious with it. I want a base truck. I want a manual transmission. Cloth seats. Air conditioning. White would be nice. I want NO extras. They’ll just break and I don’t want the headache. I’m going to be that old gal in the commercial who says, ‘I don’t know where I was at 100,000 miles, but at half a million, I was over yonder.’ That’s gonna be me. I keep a vehicle forever and I run it into the ground. I won’t put a dime down today. Whatever your best out-the-door offer is in round numbers, I’m gonna go home and think about. If I come back, I’m gonna bring you a check. Can you, for the love of all that’s holy, help me?”“Gray or blue?”“I said white.”“Yes, ma’am, we have four. Do you want gray or blue cloth interior?”“What?”“We have two of each.”I looked at Drewski, he looked at me, I looked at the car salesman.He said, “Would you like a test drive?”I almost cried. Drewski shrieked like the little heathen he was. We went on a test drive. And I knew when I drove back into the lot, that this was my truck. One week later, mom gave me a ride back. I walked in with the check for $9400. Drove home in my brand-new Toyota pick-up truck, 12 miles on the odometer, white, gray cloth seats and carpeting, 5-speed, 4-cylinder, air conditioning, and a bumper. You had to pay extra for a bumper that year, they weren’t included, But they rolled the price into the $9400. Because I was gonna walk if they didn’t.I put 365,000 miles on it in 23 years. I loved, loved, loved that truck. Guess who’s driving it now? My nephew.(Tom T. the Alaskan Malamute was a terrible driver, especially when his mom Summer called shotgun.)P.S. I did have to return it to the dealer 500 miles later. See, I had read the owner’s manual cover-to-cover, never having a vehicle that came with an owner’s manual, and it said don’t drive over 50 mph for the first 500 miles. I did so faithfully. At 501 miles, I edged it up past 50 mph and the alarm went off. I slowed back down and it stopped. OK. Strange, the owner’s manual didn’t mention an alarm, just the caution to break the engine in easy by not going over 50 mph in the first 500 miles.Told mom about it and over the phone she gave me the silence, that ‘my firstborn has said something irredeemably dumb but I’m not ready to disown her until I figure it out’ silence.She finally said, “Your base truck has an alarm that goes off when you speed? Best news I’ve ever heard. But you might want to take it back to the dealer and have it reset.”Did so. Explained. They gave me the look, that ‘the customer has said something irredeemably dumb but we can’t laugh at her in front of her’ look.They took the keys and came back giggling.“The alarm went off,” they said.It wasn’t an alarm, there is no alarm. It was an air leak that only happened when speeds approached 58 mph. They resealed the windshield while I waited. No charge.I was a kid, I’d never even driven a new vehicle, give me a break.

The first step is to call the dealer who sold you the car, explain the situation, and ask them what they propose to do for you. Only six (6) states have a Used Car Lemon Law.The Six states with a Used Car Lemon Law are Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. Each of these state Used Car Lemon Laws have multiple vehicle classifications for coverage (based on age and odometer reading) with the length of the express limited warranty varying accordingly. For comparison sake, here are the "low mileage" categories for each of the six states.Hawaii: 90 day/5,000 mile warranty for vehicles with less that 25,000 miles.Massachusetts: 90 day/3,750 mile warranty for vehicles with less than 40,000 miles.Minnesota: 60 day/2,500 mile warranty for vehicles with less than 36,000 miles.New Jersey: 90 day/3,000 mile warranty for vehicles with less than 24,000 miles.New York: 90 day/4,000 mile warranty for vehicles with less than 36,000 miles.Rhode Island: 60 day/3,000 mile warranty for vehicles with less than 36,000 miles.There are seven other states that have some other type of "minimum standard" for used vehicles.They are:Arizona and New Mexico which prohibit a disclaiming the implied warranty of merchantability for the first 15 days or 500 miles following sale.Connecticut and Nevada which require some form of warranty, with various limitations.Maine, where a vehicle must first pass a safety inspection.Pennsylvania and Illinois where dealers have limitations on disclaiming the warranty of merchantability among other things. Here’s the law in New York: Used Car Lemon Law Fact Sheet There may be 50 different answers.We know you have access to the internet, so Google “Used car lemon law” and your state.