1)
Medium- and Heavy-Duty Trucks are available from the factory with a single rear axle.
Acquiring a factory-built vehicle with your specifications eliminates your 'test-pilot' learning phase, and gets you on the road sooner... perhaps months sooner, depending on the schedule of the shop.
If you have welding and fabricator skills, eliminating an axle (one of the rears is usually a better idea) is simple and straightforward.
I don't see paying twenty-grand to modify a vehicle engineered to be used with a tandem-rears power system and braking system.
And after the modification, you are relying on the technician's ability.
The warranty of 'thirty-feet, thirty seconds' may apply.
What do your insurance underwriters say?
2)
What if your ideal vehicle is in Idaho or Florida?
The seller picks you up at the Greyhound station, drives you to the rig, then you drive it home.
This is the standard for acquiring OTR vehicles.
3)
'...endless research'..." can inhibit acting on a great vehicle.
2003, my Very Significant Other got sick.
The day of the diagnosis, we acquired a 1997 Ford CF8000 box-truck, converted it to our idea of an ExpeditionVehicle while selling everything... all in one week.
We hit the road, and never looked back.
Our vague goal was 'south from Oregon'.
Twenty-four months twenty-four thousand miles around south America.
Alaska, Panama, all over north and central America.
Winters on Baja beaches.
2020, I use the rig daily.
No regrets.
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