If you want a cart and you are not in a hurry, buy it now.
Cart prices around here follow the season about as predictably as anything I have ever seen. Everybody wants one in May and nobody is thinking about them in January, and the price difference is real.
Why the off season is cheaper
Sellers in winter are usually motivated by something other than money. They moved, they upgraded, they are tired of it taking up space in the garage. In May, sellers know a dozen people want it.
The same cart genuinely trades for less in January than it does in June. I watch it happen every year.
The catch, and how to work around it
The obvious problem: it is hard to test drive a cart properly in the snow, and a battery pack in the cold reads worse than it really is.
Two things to know.
Cold hides pack condition in both directions. A cold pack delivers less, so a good pack can seem tired. But a genuinely dead pack also gets excused as "it is just cold". Do not accept either reading at face value.
Ask when it was last charged and how it was stored. A cart that has been sitting flat in an unheated shed since October may have frozen batteries, and that damage is permanent. A cart that was properly winterized and kept on a maintainer is a completely different proposition.
Get the answer to that question before you get excited about the price.
What to check that cold does not affect
Plenty of the inspection is unaffected by the season:
- Frame condition, especially under the battery rack on older steel framed carts
- Body cracks and mounting points
- Tire age and sidewall cracking
- Whether any lift kit was installed properly
- Whether accessories are fused or wired straight to the pack
- The serial number, so you know what it actually is rather than what the ad says
There is a serial decoder and a full inspection checklist on the site.
Budget for the pack
The honest advice for any off season purchase: assume you may be buying a pack. Look at the date codes on the batteries, and if they are more than four or five years old, price the cart as though it needs new ones. If it turns out the pack is healthy, you got a bargain.
Get it looked at
I will inspect a cart before you buy it, and in winter that is more valuable than usual because I can load test the pack properly rather than guessing from a short drive around a cold driveway.
It costs a lot less than finding out in May.
406.270.9346. And have a look at the marketplace on the site, because carts come through me over the winter fairly regularly.