It's all about location, my man.
Some areas, the local papers are flooded with old trucks for sale, while other areas might have one or two a year pop up.. if that.
Lots of factors to consider.. were many of those trucks sold in that area in the first place? Is the climate in the area the kind that kept the trucks from rotting away? Local laws also play a big role in availability.. for instance, some cities require a person to keep vehicles licensed even if they don't drive them.. such laws have resulted in countless very restorable vehicles getting sent to the scrap yard, or sold off cheap just to get rid of them.
Then there's local demand. Trucks for years have been far less popular than cars.. in fact, some argue that the surge in popularity of old trucks in recent years is due in large part, to the ever shrinking number of available cars.
In many areas, there just isn't much of a demand for the old trucks.. so they do exsist in those areas, but you don't often see them listed in the local paper.. because the people who have them don't figure anybody would actually pay money for them.. so putting an ad in the paper would just be a waste of money.
The thing to do isn't to just sit at home and look in the paper for an old truck.. go take a drive out in the country.. drive slow when passing old farms and buildings.. you might be suprised what you find.
Also check out old junkyards out in rual areas.. those places can be gold mines of old trucks.
Now if you're looking for a fully restored kind of truck, keep one thing in mind.
Many people spend tens of thousands of dollars in parts and time putting a restored truck together.. and such a truck could easily represent thousands of hours just hunting down parts.
When you have that kind of money and time invested in a project, it's difficult to sell.. mainly because you'll almost never get even close to your investment back out of it, not to mention, once you spend that kind of time with a project, you grow attached to it.
So finding quality frame off restorations isn't generally an easy thing to do, especially at a reasonable price, because they just don't often get sold unless the person just gets sick of it (or runs out of money) and abandons the project half way thru, or they fall on tough financial times and are forced to sell it.
Your best bet, especially since you've been looking for FOUR YEARS with no luck finding one in your area, is to bite the bullet, rent a trailer, and come down to the states and bag an old AD truck in decent condition for a grand or so, and then spend the other $15,000 you have in your budget to fix it up just the way you want it.
