As is often the case, commenters pick up on some aspect of a blog post that was not central to it and an interesting discussion develops around it.
In my post about poor people living on the edge who sincerely believe that Trump is going to act in their interests and not take any action that might harm them, some picked up on an item in the news report that mentioned that they owned a pickup truck or an SUV, and this was taken as a sign that they were willing to expend what little resources they had to purchase what others might consider a frivolous item they did not need. (Commenter flex entered the discussion with a very thoughtful post that I recommend reading.)
There are some things that are definitely true of life in the US. In most places, some kind of motorized vehicle is essential for people to get to work or fulfill other daily life chores. For many people living on the edge of ruin, what drives their vehicle choice is price. Sometimes an old truck may be all that they can afford. Their purchases are also often driven by the affordability of the monthly payment, not even the actual cost of the vehicle, and so can be persuaded to buy something because of its low introductory payment. Not all buyers are financially savvy and being financially savvy sometimes requires being financially solvent and stable. My choice of a compact sedan (Honda Accord) was made on considerations of its reputation for having low maintenance costs and being trouble free and after having it for 11 years, that has turned out to be true. I could definitely have bought a much cheaper car but could afford to weigh long-term factors over up-front cost. Not everyone has that luxury.
If you live on a farm or work in any kind of business that involves hauling heavy stuff around or needing to go off-road on a routine basis, then a pickup truck becomes an essential item, not a luxury. Their high-clearance and all-wheel drive capability comes in very useful. It is harder to understand the prevalence of such vehicles in urban areas or in climates like where I live where there is no snow and ice.
It is likely true that for many, the vehicle they drive is seen as a refection of their self-image and that driving a pick up truck or an SUV is seen as a symbol of their worth that they are unwilling to forego, even if they do not need it. I live in an apartment complex that has 200 one- and two-bedroom units. It is residential and yet I see several large trucks in parking spaces that they can barely fit into. One is owned by an elderly couple where the wife has a compact sedan but the husband drives the truck. I have never seen them carrying large items but they may be doing that at times that I missed.
Just the other day, I came across this Ford F-350 truck in the parking lot. It has dual real wheels and is huge.
I was shocked at how large it was up close. It needed to straddle two parking spaces. The top of the cab was well above my head. I am pretty sure some people would need a step-ladder to climb into it. But is addition, each of its wheels had a ring of spikes sticking out of them, somewhat like what Messala’s chariot had in the film Ben Hur, the only purpose that I can think of being to intimidate other drivers, giving out the message that they rule the road.
But that does not mean that all such urban trucks are frivolous. I have a friend who is by no means wealthy and he drives a small pick up truck. He told me that he used to house sit for a wealthy person and that that person, knowing he had no vehicle of his own, gifted him his old truck when he moved away. It is the only vehicle he has and he finds it hard to afford to get it fixed when it breaks down, so he is not your stereotypical person who drives a truck in the city as some kind a personal statement.
Curious, I looked up a Reddit thread as to why people buy pickup trucks. Many owners admitted that they did not need it on a routine basis but that once in a while, they needed to haul furniture or something equally large and found it useful. Most people do have such a need at some point or other. In my case, I have needed to just once in the last five years and it was easier for me to just rent a truck or trailer for the day and be done with it. I got the sense that although its utility was used as a justification for owning one, for some owning and driving a truck satisfied a need over and above its occasional utilitarian value, that it made them feel that they were rugged outdoorsy types, cowboys even, and not wimpy city dwellers.
Mano, I agree. My observations support your own.
Sometimes, you need a big truck to haul a bigger truck.
https://www.heavyhaulers.com/monster-truck.jpg
At one point in my life I wanted a huge truck with really big tires because I thought they looked “cool” and I thought everyone else would also think I was cool (they were called “monster trucks” back then). Then I turned 12 and outgrew it.
I lived in a village in north Sweden. Having a farm, it was necessary to have a car big enough to carry big items once in a while. A tractor was too slow for long journeys.
Also, for life in post-apocalyptic Australia, a big vehicle combining all-terrain capacity with speed would be essential for survival.
@girgerjohansson, #4
for post-apocalyptic Australia, you just need a modded 1973 Ford XB Falcon GT 351.
My experience is if you only need them every so often rent is pretty easy, but the faffing around with rent adds significant time. These days I need a car for disability reasons and haul stuff (logs, steel, and the like) often enough that having a truck is the easiest option
and by “truck” i mean a Honda Acty kei truck 😛
When you drive a “pick up truck” you will find you have a number of “friends” who need to have a couch moved.
and maybe a fridge
I do live on a farm and grow hay and raise livestock, so… for me a truck is a necessity. You can’t tow a livestock trailer with a Subaru. Since I have a truck and drive it, what astonishes me is that anyone would CHOOSE to drive such a vehicle in town, on purpose. When I’m hauling hay, or towing a livestock trailer, I have to use a truck -- no choice -- but I would not drive that truck everywhere as my first choice in comfort or fuel consumption. What’s even stranger is that a lot of the trucks I see driven in town are short bed trucks. They get the exact same crappy mileage as a full-sized truck would, and you can’t even haul anything with them. (So yes, the cybertruck puzzles me as well.) I conclude that Mano is right, and the trucks are being bought and driven for some purpose other than utilitarian. It certainly is not for the comfort of the ride.
But it might make sense for him to sell it, and buy a smaller vehicle which would be cheaper to run. I say “might” because perhaps it’s unsaleable at any price which would allow him to buy a smaller replacement.
Chigau @ 7
When I need help with hauling something big, I make sure to reciprocate some way. If they do not accept cash, I try to give them some gift, it is useful to know birthdays.
The whole point of ‘news’ is that it be edited.
My first car I bought entirely by myself was a station wagon (remember those?). Be~eeg used vehicles with horrible repair ratings (almost entirely american-made and -branded) that got terrible milage were the cheapest option. Insurance was noticeably cheaper, because there was no issue with any retained value if the car was damaged no matter who was at fault. Vehicle tax and registration was cheaper because the car was old and cheap. Parts to repair it were readily available inexpensively because it was a model everyone bought (and which needed a lot of repair) and the parts were made in-country and didn’t need to be imported.
Out of all the vehicles that people kept vs the ones that they sold, and I did very much ask around and made a point of making new friends and changing the point of casual conversations to find out, owners of smaller cars wanted theirs more. Either because it was entirely what they could afford and they bought and kept a smaller car because they absolutely could not get a larger car, or because they were like Mano and it was part of their financial plan. Owners of larger cars by and large didn’t plan or have to plan.
The cost of gasoline was high, but not so high as to cancel any of that. The cost of repairing it (if I paid someone and didn’t do it myself) was high. Why do anything at all about dings bumps and dents? Buying an entirely new heap of junk would be cheaper than repairing it if the issue was serious. It was a roll of the dice.
Therefore, she by-definition was counting on luck and had a large old unitedstatian gasoline-guzzling, now-broken car.
It was weird that that one word ‘old’ was somehow too long for the article. Me, I attribute fake-news and malice on such a quote being made, or in the article in the first place. I concluded that the entire article was worth little. I also wondered whether either article was AI-written, because a machine would not care.
Entirely possible. My current daily driver (a 2010 Honda Jazz/Fit) is worth far more to me than anyone would be prepared to pay me for it. I *know* it’s as good as it is, because I’ve driven it 170,000 miles. I can’t imagine anyone paying me what I believe it to be worth to me, hence I’m hanging onto it for the foreseeable future. When it’s finally time to get rid of it, I’ll likely buy another -- total cost of ownership has been laughably low, and since I do far fewer miles nowadays than I did ten years ago, it might even last the rest of my (driving) life. Modern internal combustion engine cars, properly maintained, can last far, far longer than any possible battery-powered equivalent, since they don’t depend on a limited-lifespan technology. I have a friend who’s still driving round in a car from the 1930s. I guarantee that in 90 years time the number of Teslas still working will be zero.
(Aside: Elon Musk has done such a good job of promoting the public image of the vehicles his company produces that just the other day one of them literally exploded and burst into flames in front of a hotel, and the police had to clarify that it had done so because it was packed with explosives, not because it’s a Tesla and sometimes they just, y’know, do that.)
I’ve lived all my adult life in a metropolitan area. A bit over a decade ago, Husband and I started figuring out where we’d retire, and chose a rural area that happens to be far from our current location. We built a home there, and are in the long process of shifting ourselves permanently to that area, as I am retired and he is retiring this year.
Here in city/suburbia, pickup truck use seems to be very bimodal. There are the ordinary kind used by contractors/landscapers/tradespeople, which are mostly stock except for tool boxes, racks, etc. in the beds. Then there are the monsters: full-size trucks, elevated to ridiculous heights to accommodate enormous, oversized wheels, that sometimes seem to barely fit between lane markings on the road. It’s not my business if someone wants to drive such a behemoth, except that I tire of them parking far over the line into my disabled parking space in a public lot. But it does strike me as somehow antisocial.
Husband and I do own a pickup truck ourselves, a 2000 Dodge. In the 2000s and 2010s, we spent vacations traveling in it, carrying a cabover camper in the bed, and explored many interesting places. Now that we’re resettling in a rural area, the beast does come in handy from time to time, it is paid for, and licensing/insurance/maintenance costs are low enough to justify keeping it. But it isn’t fun to drive or park. A standard statement in our household is, “I need to go pick up [item] this weekend. I don’t think it’ll fit in the Subaru, so I guess I’ll have to take the truck.” There’s always a sigh in there somewhere.
I own a humongous Chevy Silverado pickup truck with gnarly tires. When I first moved up here, my Jeep Wrangler with a 4″ lift kit couldn’t make it in and out of my driveway on a snowy day, so I backed down to the Silverado. One problem I have to take into account is that if the driveway (1/2 mile long unpaved mud) is bad, the fuel truck for my oil furnace can’t make it back and I have to haul oil in jerricans or watch my house freeze and my pipes burst. The silverado is also great for when someone needs something smaller than a sherman tank hauled. I’ve moved apartments for people, freezers, fridges, wood splitters, cinderblocks, and a Bridgeport milling machine. It’s not a gas efficient truck so when I make long trips I take my Honda CRV which gets twice the gas mileage but cannot handle more than 8″ of snow. I have the king cab model, which has back seats, that I have removed, and I stow whatever tools I am using for whatever project I am on, right now. I miss my Suburban, which had an enclosed rear big enough that I could put a dozen sheets of drywall in and they’d still be dry. With the Silverado I sometimes find myself hauling plywood at 2:00am so it doesn’t get rained on.
I have had various people sneer at my humongous gas guzzler that blots out the sun. And, it does because sometimes the shade is nice. But I figure that I’m keeping a fairly light footprint and by choosing not to reproduce myself in order to satisfy my ego’s hunger, I have done more to help keep the planet viable than any given breeder and their horde of descendants.
The acronym that comes to mind is “FWAT” (Friend With A Truck) I’ve moved probably 3 apartments and associated furniture, as well as a machine shop, horses, and many lawnmowers. I actually see this as aggregation of usage: the person who calls me for assistance moving their refrigerator is taking advantage of my truck without having to have their own.
With regards to parking, it’s a farm truck. I seldom have to parallel or even head in park it because usually I am parking at my shop in the mud apron leading to the door, or at my house in the mud apron leading to the door. When I do take it somewhere, I look at the parking situation and park it someplace where a 900lb gorilla would be comfortable.
My old truck had a shotgun rack in the rear compartment, with a cricket bat and a crowbar. My current Silverado does not have anything like that, though if it gets a bit more beat up I’ll put a rack in the back with a katana and my L1A1 (yes I have the necessary permits)
Marcus @#14,
Wait, you have a cricket bat? As a cricket aficionado living in a country that has little idea what cricket is, I am astonished that you even managed to obtain one. What’s the story?