When you purchase a pre-owned certified Toyota, chances are you’re taking a good look at the odometer. While the vehicle will be in great working order, it’s important to know just how far it has traveled as you assess whether or not the vehicle is the right one for you. You’ll be spending plenty of time in it as you travel from St Louis to Hazelwood and Ballwin, so it’s best to know what you are looking at and why the odometer reading is so important.

An odometer is the gauge in a certified Toyota that tells you precisely how many miles the car has been driven. It may have traveled throughout Missouri and other states, or just stayed in the St Louis MO area, but the odometer will tell you how many miles this vehicle has traveled in its lifetime. Early odometers only went as high as 99,999 miles because the first vehicles rarely traveled more miles than this. Over time, however, people started driving further, and with a Toyota you can expect to get far more miles than this out of your vehicle. Odometers were changed to include an extra space for the many vehicles that make it well past 100,000 miles.

Most certified Toyotas also have a trip odometer. This gauge allows you to record how far you’ve gone from St Louis to Kirkwood, for example, or how far you’ve driven between fill-ups. It can be reset to zero at any time, so you can record new mileage whenever you need to. The primary odometer, however, cannot be reset. Since it records the miles the vehicle has ever traveled, it is not meant to be tampered with. It’s actually illegal to roll back the miles on an odometer to make the car appear to have been used less than it has been.

If you are looking into purchasing a certified Toyota, take a look at the odometer. Even a high mileage vehicle is worth investigating, but it is an important tool to use when you are considering which vehicle is right for you.