Via The Drive: / Kottke: / Kottke:
I have to defend myself too much on this one. I emailed someone a while back who reached out to me asking why I drive a truck and “you don’t seem like a typical truck owner” and berated me for driving a gas-guzzler that kills children and serves no purpose. I replied with this:
I’m a bicycle, motorcycle, pedestrian, VW Golf and pickup truck owning American who has lived in Jacksonville Florida, , Birmingham AL, San Francisco (downtown/mission district), Vermont and now Charlotte, North Carolina.
I grew up on a dairy farm where everyone had a classic bench seat 8 foot bed pickup truck. Lots of my child hood was riding in the bed of the truck, hunting or just being around trucks.
I love my efficient BMW motorcycle, our E-Bikes and our little 1.4 liter Volkswagen Golf. I also had an EV but sold it due to northern Vermont’s sparse charging network.
In 2020, I purchased my first pickup truck. I’m not a laborer nor do I work with my hands.
The problem statement that lead us to buy a pickup truck was my motorcycle hobby and camping. I sleep off the motorcycle about 45 nights a year. My wife and I both ride motorcycles and we found that when we both ride to a rally (usually 1000+ miles away), our combined MPG of our motorcycles was 30 MPGs and we were limited by how much we could carry (like cooking equipment) and it would take us longer to get to a rally because my wife wants to stop every 250 miles and rest for a while.
We settled on a RAM EcoDiesel. It gets 29 MPGs unloaded and 26 MPGs with 2 motorcycles in the bed. So we can leave work Friday AM, work on the truck WiFi on the way to the event and ride our bikes all weekend then when we’re exhausted, we load up the bikes in the bed and drive back home. The truck isn’t used for commuting or parking in city spots. It lives in my driveway but 20K miles a year, we drive it to events or to off road camping events. Also, I buy/repair/trade/work on a lot of vintage motorcycles so just 2 weeks ago, I I drove north to New York and picked up a bike when it was too cold to ride and brought it home. On the whole, roughly 25 weeks out of the year, the truck is hauling motorcycles. Not Harleys but mostly European bikes, eBikes and dirt bikes. It’s a fully stock truck, too!
I would never own one of those 12 MPGs gas guzzlers and honestly, it was really hard to find my truck (pre-COVID) because it was impossible to find a Diesel (not heavy duty) ram 1500 with an extended bed. All of the beds in stock were short beds and those don’t fit 2 bikes so I had to wait 16 weeks to get a truck that could actually do truck things. Both Diesel and 7 foot bed is a special order item because they’re really hard to park at city locations. I actually avoid cities with the truck or have to park at the very back of a parking lot to be considerate.
I hate driving the truck, I don’t really associate with truck people and yet here I am, a truck owner. Saving grace is it’s fantastic on fuel and hauls our bikes around no problem.
I just moved back to New Hampshire and the truck hauled two motorcycles in the bed and one being towed back north. It got 26 MPGs on that drive. I used it to do 8 loads of trash / recycling to the dumps in NC and NH. I used it to fit a full size 73” TV in the bed we bought and I also put an entire broken fridge in the back our tenants left and was able to close the bed and take it to the disposal center to drop off. It hauled my 90 pound eBike box from the UPS center to my home and this weekend, it’ll haul 6 adults to the mountains to go skiing with all of our gear in it and still manage nearly 30 miles per gallon even on winter diesel fuel.
I still hate trucks. I wish this was lower to the ground and had better visibility. The front grill is too tall and I don’t like driving it but damn is it awesome to own. I will actually next year (2026) be purchasing a 2-door sporty roadster as my daily and this will become truly the utility vehicle. I miss having a small car for lots of reasons (fun, efficiency, comfort, maintenance) and miss my Golf R dearly like every single day but having a truck the last 4 years for two cross-country moves, many motorcycle rallies, family events, camping, hauling, it’s been really quite amazing.
I’m not a truck person, I don’t like being branded a cowboy or republican or asshole and I bet I’m not alone. This truck gets better fuel economy than my Golf R did and it’s cheaper to insure.
So much in the article above is wrong:
- “All can hustle to 60 mph in five to six seconds. That’s ’90s Ferrari fast. “
- “daily drive a 5,500-pound vehicle, one that the EPA says returns on average 10 mpg less than a passenger car”
- truck owners oversample in ones like: the ability to outperform others, to look good while driving, to present a tough image, to have their car act as extension of their personality, and to stand out in a crowd.”
- “Truck drivers use their trucks very much like other car owners: for commuting to and from work, presumably alone.”
I don’t know, I use my motorcycle or eBike for commuting, I haul many weeks a year, I get higher fuel economy in the truck than I did my Golf R and I certainly don’t think I look manly because what I’ve heard indicates I look like I’m compensating for something when I drive a truck. It’s an identity I don’t have and frankly I’m considering getting a BMW X5 Diesel if I can find one instead. It can tow what I need to tow so I can just get an X5 + a 12 foot enclosed trailer and while it’d probably get lower fuel economy, at least people wouldn’t judge me when I drive it around. And that first line…my truck is slow as crap. My golf R was 0-60 in 3.6 seconds. This thing hits 60 in 15+ seconds. It’s a diesel…it’s VERY slow.