Mark Driver — Founder

Founder of ProblemsByVin. Garland, Texas. Domestic trucks, diesels, and the math of buying mechanically-problematic vehicles.

Mark Driver started ProblemsByVin out of frustration. He'd watched too many people sign for a used truck or SUV that had documented problems they had no way of knowing about, and the data was already out there — NHTSA was publishing it, the federal government was paying to keep it current, and almost nobody was reading it.

He lives in Garland, Texas, with his wife and three kids. He runs a moving company that keeps him in trucks daily — half a dozen rigs ranging from cargo vans to 26-foot box trucks, all of which break sometimes and all of which he ends up under at some point. His current personal vehicle is a 2017 F-250 6.2 gas. He's pulled the heads on it twice. He knows where it leaks before it leaks.

Before the moving business, Mark spent years buying surplus industrial valves out of refineries and scrapyards across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, then turning around and selling them to rebuilders. Different industry, same skill — knowing what something's actually worth, and what it'll cost to make right, before the seller tells you. He thinks about used trucks the same way.

Most of his writing on ProblemsByVin covers domestic full-size trucks and SUVs. Ford Super Duty, F-150, Expedition. The whole Chevy 1500 and 2500 line, Tahoes and Suburbans, Yukons. The Ram heavy duty trucks behind the Cummins. He writes about engines he's personally been under, or that someone in his family or his shop network has been under recently. He doesn't write about vehicles he doesn't know.

Mark isn't a licensed ASE technician and the site doesn't claim he is. His credibility comes from years of buying problem trucks, fixing them, running them through real work, and selling them on. Editorial standards for the site — what gets covered, who pays for what, who writes — are published openly on the Editorial Standards page under his name.

When he's not in the office or under a truck, he's at one of his kids' games.