How hard is it to find a used truck in Alaska?

Question

I'm moving to Alaska and want to know if it is hard to find a 4 wheel drive truck there that isn't rusted out. Would it be cheaper to just buy one in the mainland and drive it in?

Answer 1

If you're on the road system (Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kenai, Soldotna, Homer, Valdez, Seward), it is no problem. There are local dealers and people drive in cars from "Outside" (the 48 states). There are many ads for 4WD trucks (and Subarus, RAV4s Suburans, etc) in every issue. People get new vehicles, fall behind on payments, need a different car, etc. All the reasons people sell a used truck anywhere.

You can look on Craigslist for Alaska whereever you are, but it hasn't seemed to me to have nearly as many listing as the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Miner or (Kenai) Peninsula Clarion in their classified ads. Check if they have there classified on line.

In addition to new car dealers having newer used trucks on their lots, there are many used car lots in all those cities as well.

Yes, some are all rusted out, but those are usually sold with a sign ("$200") in the window rather than through a dealer.

In SE AK (Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka, Petersburg, the market is a little tighter because you can't drive there and the smaller towns have no factory dealers. But you can drive a car on the ferry in Bellingham and off in any of those towns, so there are reasonable ways to get a car to town.

Rural, off-the-road-system Alaska is tough. Unless you fly a car in, it has to come in on the yearly barge. Either way is expensive and people keep really ugly cars running a long time because of it. It also creates a strange market since there are X people in town and Y cars and those numbers don't change much. One car crash and another with a bad trannie and suddenly there aren't enough cars to go around.

It is probably cheaper to buy a truck and drive it in if you compare the combined costs of airfare (for you), shipping your stuff, and buying a truck. But just for the truck - if you can drive there, the local cost won't be much higher than in the 48 states.

Answer 2

Depends on what city. I know its not hard in Fairbanks because my mother lives there and she buys them all the time. They also have a pretty good sized Ford dealership that sells used cars.