Back in June of this year I moved to Freeport ahead of Becky to begin my new life as an expat. For the first couple weeks I rented from Hertz and the rate wasn't bad at all, only about $375 a week for an economy car. But I knew that I needed a truck and I had just left my 2001 Chevy Silverado 1500 back in Florida where my highly capable brother in law had agreed to sell it in exchange for a small commission. That vehicle had 265k miles on it and it showed. The tranny was a factory rebuild with about 100k miles on it and it had an aluminum truck box and $1000 of new tires on it. The engine ran well but the interior was in poor shape. In truth I would have imported it because it was all I really need in a work truck and because it ran so well. But that was out of the question given that it was 21 years old and Bahamian customs requires imported vehicles to be 10 years old or less.
Now, I had been looking at truck ads in Freeport's Facebook Marketplace for at least 8 months prior and mainly what I saw was either old trucks with 130k miles and a lot of wear on them (especially the interiors...) for $15k OR much nicer trucks with 60k miles on them for $35k. There is not much selection and the market for used vehicles is very slow here. I would see vehicles on the market for 6+ months. But one thing I noted was that as US truck prices skyrocketed, the prices in Freeport remained flat. So I knew I would be taking advantage of that delayed effect by buying a truck on the local market.
As luck would have it, about 3 weeks before I moved here a new vehicle was added to Facebook Marketplace and it was a 2014 Chevy Silverado Double Cab 2WT (work truck). It is a 4 door like my old Silverado with a full size bed which drives more like a car than a truck. So it was just what I was looking for. And the asking price was $19k which was quite low given the fact that import tariffs are 65% for this vehicle. When I got here I began communicating with the seller and made arrangements to check it out in person.
When I got there I noticed that the front of the hood on the driver's side was not well aligned and that the hood and left front fender were not factory paint. So I asked the seller how bad the wreck was. While he had not offered the information up front, each question I asked was answered immediately and honestly.
Turns out, this vehicle had a salvage title. The seller had bought it at US auction (which I looked up using the VIN). Below are the pictures of the accident damage from that auction site.
This accident happened back on 2019-12-26, before the massive increase in vehicle prices occurred in the US. At the time of the auction on 2020-02-21, the vehicle was only valued at $20k but with an estimated $16k cost of repairs. Of course these are bloated US prices. No way should it actually cost that much to repair because this damage did not affect the radiator or AC condenser, nor the engine nor did it damage the frame. In looking up the specs I see that an upgrade to the 2014 model year was the use of "high strength steel" which might account for the lack of frame damage in this case. So we are just talking about replacing a bumper and the grille and doing some body work repairs to the hood and front left fender. We must also account for the air bag which was blown out and the driver's seat belt which needed to be replaced.
But the interior was nice and clean and this vehicle only had 33.5k miles on it, very rare here in Freeport and not common in the US either.
As you can see, the interior is nothing fancy, but it is very clean. All the gauges work, the AC blows super cold, the brakes are excellent and the engine purrs. The stock stereo is not at all bad either.
So the Bahamian seller won this auction and then transported it to Florida and imported it as is. Thus he paid 65% duty on his costs which were about $8k after all the auction fees. I was told that his landed cost, after duty, was about $12k.
It's important to keep in mind that if I had bought this model of vehicle myself in the US in June of this year, the average price with the cloth interior and the 4.3 engine in this mileage range and without wreck damage would have been about $26k before tax tag and title and I found no equivalent vehicles in the US with only 37k miles on them. They were all 45k or more miles for the $26k price. So at 8% tax assume it really would have cost about $28k out the door. From my post about shipping my Chevy Volt, we can estimate that the cost of shipping this vehicle from the US would have been $3000 for shipping and processing but then a whopping $18,200 in customs duty for an insane total of $21,200 PLUS the out the door purchase price of 28,000. Add it all up and an equivalent deal on a non-totaled title vehicle would have cost $49,200.
After importing the wrecked vehicle, the enterprising seller then acquired an aftermarket bumper, grill, headlight set, etc. and installed all of it to make the truck look and run great.
Now, this vehicle had the aluminum 4.3L engine and I was hoping for the 5.3 in case I wanted to tow anything. Also, it has a salvage title. Also, the airbag never got fixed (nor will I spend the ridiculous money to fix it) and the driver's seatbelt still needs to be replaced (parts are $200 but need to be imported). With all that, I talked the seller, who had put about 3k miles on the vehicle since it had been repaired, down to $17k and we did the deal.
So I ended up here in Freeport with an excellent truck that there is no possible way I could have bought in the US for $17k today. My old Silverado sold in Florida and I netted $2200 from that deal. So my net cash outlay for the truck upgrade was only $14,800. Good luck ever seeing that kind of deal again. The inventory of vehicles on-island that were imported before US vehicle prices went nuts will dwindle to nearly zero. And anything left will be junk that nobody wants.
Here is what the truck looks like today:
That small misalignment of the hood on the driver's side is the only way most people could tell this was ever in a wreck.
Again the cost delta between the brute force open wallet approach of just buying something and paying all the duty and being lucky enough to find this deal was about $32,000! So this was a smoking good deal any way you slice it. I just need to get the driver's seatbelt replaced and I should be good to go. By the way, liability insurance is a very reasonable $350 per year for each of our vehicles. Not bad at all and in fact about half of what we used to pay in Texas.
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