Loading The Dirt

Cheap trucks often get a bad name. Regularly the concept is that used tow trucks make no sense. They do not frequently get good mileage. They are big, often loud and infrequently really pretty. Here’s why old pickups should be valued, not scorned.

1. Poor mileage, compared to what?

My 1980 Plymouth Arrow Pickup gets twenty-five mpg. My 1976 Chevy C-10 gets 15 miles per gallon. Comparable new trucks are miles more powerful, but not very much better on the mileage. So, you can never justify a new lorry just on mileage.

2. Energy cost to make a new truck.

An old automobile, car or van, sitting there’s a store of value and energy. All the energy, human and fossil, that went into building that vehicle is stored right there ready to work. Scrap the car and most of that energy is now not available to be used. Sure, you can recycle the basic materials. You can’t recycle the value-added design and producing that went into that truck. Ditching helpful trucks is a terrible waste.

3. No money time bombs.

Older cars generally are cheap to maintain. That’s’s mainly because of all the infrastructure that’s’s already there to keep them going. Buy the most recent and best and the upkeep issues may be far larger than you dream. Take batteries. How much will a battery replacement cost for a half-breed down the road? What is the environmental cost of battery recycling and replacement? These are lurking money time bombs that will make many more modern cars unaffordable for poor people.

4. Parts are everywhere.

Used parts and the people to install them are the way to keep old trucks working. Many vehicles hit the scrap heap not because they’re worn out or out of fashion. It’s just because parts are high priced and the skills to deal with that specific model are not common. Drive old Chevy, Ford and Dodge lorries and forget all that, at least for the moment.

5. Tools not toys.

trucks are tools like spades and hammers. They can be art objects too. But older lorries keep going because they make sense. Will the newest vehicles stand the test of time? Perhaps, but maybe not.

Inexpensive wagons represent a large amount of energy and work that has been spent. Scrap a lorry and you have made unavailable huge amounts of energy invested in coming up with and putting that machine together. Keeping vans working is much more environmentally provident that ditching them and replacing with new.

What about comparing an old Chevy pickup with new hybrid pickup trucks SUV. No comparison again. Look at what you can move with old lorries and look at what your small half-breed will do. The old van is a different beast that excels at what it does.