I needed a bigger truck.

Not a common problem, perhaps. A common, but unnecessary, desire in some cultural groups more likely. When you use a truck to haul heavy equipment and trailers to make a living, however, sometimes you just need a bigger truck.

When it comes to a work truck it's all about cost efficiency. Same concepts as technology infrastructure. You scale your server costs up as your demand scales. You don't get the top tier service when you're in beta testing.

Upgrades are a little slower in the real world with heavy equipment. I've been spending the last decade building up my fleet of necessary components as my skill and work grows and evolves. I started with an old, basic truck that had been in my family for almost as long as me.

I kept it running simply because it was fun to learn to fix it vs just spending money on something new. I now have a large diesel and multiple trailers and pieces of heavy machinery.

But how did I get there? Mostly through skill-arbitrage and betting on myself. Very little cashflow.

I started learning how to fix diesel engines because so many work trucks and machines ran them. I got my first diesel as a payment for labor I performed. I fixed it up and eventually sold it to someone out of state who wanted to collect it for more than I could get in the local market for a work truck. I had connections, however, from being active in online truck communities.

Network-arbitrage.

My next diesel I got in a trade for an old muscle car I had fixed up.

What I got was arguably higher in value for what it could do as a work truck, but the car had nostalgic value that made it worth it to the guy. That was a really interesting bit of nostalgia-arbitrage. I nailed that one by having a really good driving example that I'd worked hard to restore the "classic feel" of. I wasn't trying for this trade, I was just open to it and took it when I saw the arbitrage potential.

Most recently, however, I realized that this newly acquired truck wasn't quite enough for the newest machine I had added to the fleet that needed to be hauled around. I needed a bigger truck.

So it was back into the trenches to find another arbitrage. Some people would just go finance a newer truck, but then you have double or triple the amount of work you have to do to make your payments. This is an extremely down economy, so there isn't that much work to get. That makes financing a poor gamble. Risk analysis says that high interest rates and low economic power in your target demo is a bad trade.

This is the time for the scrappy underdogs who can execute skill based arbitrage to accomplish more with less cash.

So I'm out in the trenches, looking for that hidden gem. Something that is worth more than I can afford to buy, but somehow accessible through skill-arbitrage.

What I found was a truck that had a couple of "red flags". But what it also had was some signs of great potential. With older vehicles what you're looking for is signs of maintenance. I took a pretty big gamble and traded my truck in and put some of the cash from selling my other truck down to go all-in on this new gamble. The dealer had been struggling to sell it because the market has tanked recently and the little red flags were more obvious than the hidden potential.

Fast forward a week and now I'm putting on the first wash of what hopefully will be a successful investment.

This trade was quite complex:

• The dealer needed to move a stuck truck. Small dealers can't afford to carry vehicles long, and they were underwater having bought high and not sold before the crash

• The truck had some red flags that meant it couldn't go straight to work. Most operators aren't mechanics, so this is a no-go

• My truck had curb appeal because it was a specialty older model that was highly desirable in its condition, even if the sticker price was lower than the one they were trying to sell

So I was able to acquire the much more expensive truck for a very small amount of cash to get them out from underwater with a truck they could actually sell to recover their lost investment on the pricier truck.

Cashflow-arbitrage.

For me, I got a truck that would have cost me much more money to buy an equivalent of. All I had to do was put some time and parts into it and get it back to its full potential. Now that I've done that, the secret hidden potential of all the maintenance and upgrades the previous owner had put into it have been unlocked. It was a bank repossession, you see. Someone had owned it on loan and it appears they had spent all the "equity" of the truck on upgrading all the common wear parts to newer, more robust versions during the market boom when everyone was pumping money into toys. And then the economy tanked and apparently their truck got repossessed and bounced around for awhile, not getting properly maintained. Which resulted in the appearance of being a "red flag" when it really was a hidden gem that was just due for some important maintenance.

Maintenance-arbitrage.

But the real kicker with this one is that it's not like I'm just gonna go sell the truck to extract my value. Because there's a withdrawal tax on this investment called a bear market. The street value isn't liquid. So instead this yield is locked in a vesting contract that will incrementally release yield payments after "proof of contribution" milestones when I complete jobs and get paid for the services enabled by the truck.

The principle value will hold as long as I keep up with maintenance, and I can receive interest payments on my vested value as long as I keep jobs flowing.

BarterFi

I needed a bigger truck.

Not a common problem, perhaps. A common, but unnecessary, desire in some cultural groups more likely. When you use a truck to haul heavy equipment and trailers to make a living, however, sometimes you just need a bigger truck.

When it comes to a work truck it's all about cost efficiency. Same concepts as technology infrastructure. You scale your server costs up as your demand scales. You don't get the top tier service when you're in beta testing.

Upgrades are a little slower in the real world with heavy equipment. I've been spending the last decade building up my fleet of necessary components as my skill and work grows and evolves. I started with an old, basic truck that had been in my family for almost as long as me.

I kept it running simply because it was fun to learn to fix it vs just spending money on something new. I now have a large diesel and multiple trailers and pieces of heavy machinery.

But how did I get there? Mostly through skill-arbitrage and betting on myself. Very little cashflow.

I started learning how to fix diesel engines because so many work trucks and machines ran them. I got my first diesel as a payment for labor I performed. I fixed it up and eventually sold it to someone out of state who wanted to collect it for more than I could get in the local market for a work truck. I had connections, however, from being active in online truck communities.

Network-arbitrage.

My next diesel I got in a trade for an old muscle car I had fixed up.

What I got was arguably higher in value for what it could do as a work truck, but the car had nostalgic value that made it worth it to the guy. That was a really interesting bit of nostalgia-arbitrage. I nailed that one by having a really good driving example that I'd worked hard to restore the "classic feel" of. I wasn't trying for this trade, I was just open to it and took it when I saw the arbitrage potential.

Most recently, however, I realized that this newly acquired truck wasn't quite enough for the newest machine I had added to the fleet that needed to be hauled around. I needed a bigger truck.

So it was back into the trenches to find another arbitrage. Some people would just go finance a newer truck, but then you have double or triple the amount of work you have to do to make your payments. This is an extremely down economy, so there isn't that much work to get. That makes financing a poor gamble. Risk analysis says that high interest rates and low economic power in your target demo is a bad trade.

This is the time for the scrappy underdogs who can execute skill based arbitrage to accomplish more with less cash.

So I'm out in the trenches, looking for that hidden gem. Something that is worth more than I can afford to buy, but somehow accessible through skill-arbitrage.

What I found was a truck that had a couple of "red flags". But what it also had was some signs of great potential. With older vehicles what you're looking for is signs of maintenance. I took a pretty big gamble and traded my truck in and put some of the cash from selling my other truck down to go all-in on this new gamble. The dealer had been struggling to sell it because the market has tanked recently and the little red flags were more obvious than the hidden potential.

Fast forward a week and now I'm putting on the first wash of what hopefully will be a successful investment.

This trade was quite complex:

• The dealer needed to move a stuck truck. Small dealers can't afford to carry vehicles long, and they were underwater having bought high and not sold before the crash

• The truck had some red flags that meant it couldn't go straight to work. Most operators aren't mechanics, so this is a no-go

• My truck had curb appeal because it was a specialty older model that was highly desirable in its condition, even if the sticker price was lower than the one they were trying to sell

So I was able to acquire the much more expensive truck for a very small amount of cash to get them out from underwater with a truck they could actually sell to recover their lost investment on the pricier truck.

Cashflow-arbitrage.

For me, I got a truck that would have cost me much more money to buy an equivalent of. All I had to do was put some time and parts into it and get it back to its full potential. Now that I've done that, the secret hidden potential of all the maintenance and upgrades the previous owner had put into it have been unlocked. It was a bank repossession, you see. Someone had owned it on loan and it appears they had spent all the "equity" of the truck on upgrading all the common wear parts to newer, more robust versions during the market boom when everyone was pumping money into toys. And then the economy tanked and apparently their truck got repossessed and bounced around for awhile, not getting properly maintained. Which resulted in the appearance of being a "red flag" when it really was a hidden gem that was just due for some important maintenance.

Maintenance-arbitrage.

But the real kicker with this one is that it's not like I'm just gonna go sell the truck to extract my value. Because there's a withdrawal tax on this investment called a bear market. The street value isn't liquid. So instead this yield is locked in a vesting contract that will incrementally release yield payments after "proof of contribution" milestones when I complete jobs and get paid for the services enabled by the truck.

The principle value will hold as long as I keep up with maintenance, and I can receive interest payments on my vested value as long as I keep jobs flowing.

BarterFi