Living without the truck
As I wrote last month, I sold the 2008 Chevy 3500 Duramax diesel truck with the utility body on it. This was the truck that my old engineering job bought new in 2008, that had been our work vehicle during the years when my field geophysics career wound down, and that I purchased from the company for a song after the build had closed. By then the truck was largely forgotten about, and it became a rodent-infested mess.
Before I bought it, I had employee-favor-level use of the truck for years. I borrowed it to move my kids in and out of college, and towed cars with it multiple times. So my ownership of it, while extremely useful, wasn’t really that much more than a karmic extension of the access I already had anyway, but it became my financial responsibility to repair and maintain it—in other words, paying for what I’d previously been getting for free. But, yes, it was very convenient having the truck in my driveway instead of needing to drive 20 miles to where it was stored, and that was a godsend when my sister and I were emptying our mother’s house prior to sale and a seemingly endless stream of items needed to be delivered to other relatives or donated.
But let’s talk about towing cars. For many years, I was a serial user of beat-up high-mileage Suburbans. Their main utility was to take the family on the big annual Nantucket beach vacation and be able to drive on sand to the prime fishing spots at Smith Point and Great Point. The realization that I could also use the ’Burbs to tow cars home dawned on me slowly, but it was life-changing when it came. So, for a time, towing cars with the still-owned-by-work-truck was only when I was between Suburbans.
The utility of being prepared to tow a car you’re interested in buying isn’t just the original Bring a Trailer paradigm, where the car is a dead, needy, well-priced project, nor is it the more recent Bring a Trailer paradigm where the car is ungodly expensive and too mint and low-mileage to do something so banal as actually driving it home. No, the big advantage of having a tow setup is twofold. First, you can strike quickly and show unmistakable intent, purpose, and confidence—nothing says “I am here to do business and can end your Craigslist / Facebook Marketplace nightmare of deadbeats and no-shows right freaking now” than rolling into the driveway with a truck and a trailer. But second, it makes it so you don’t need to rely on anyone but yourself, another arrow in the quiver of the whole car-buyer-as-lone-wolf thing. My wonderful wife certainly has driven me to dozens of car pick-ups over the decades and would continue to do so if asked, but there’s an ineffable sense of independence that comes from doing it all by yourself. To paraphrase Carson McCullers, the truck and trailer owner is a lonely hunter.
Plus, there’s the distance part of the calculation. As I said a few weeks ago, if a car is an hour away, it’s easy enough to just drive there, check it out, decide if you want to buy it, and if you do, come back with either a second driver or a truck and a trailer. If a car is hundreds of miles away, however, it really makes sense to go there prepared to do it all in one trip and not have to rope your spouse into giving up a Saturday to drive you back there to pick it up. Plus, loading the car onto a trailer removes the often legally gray issue of driving it home without registration and insurance (in Massachusetts, the legality of temporarily slapping another plate on the car requires a set of circumstances so thin as to be nearly impossible outside of trading a car in at a dealership). Unfortunately, I’ve never owned a trailer and thus needed to go to U-Haul and rent and return an auto transporter, so whether it was with the Suburban or the borrowed Silverado or the owned Silverado, the idea that I could drop everything and simply walk out to the driveway and drive off and bag dead cheap desirable cars never really materialized into reality.
But just because I didn’t wind up using the truck that way didn’t obviate the constant feeling that I might, or that I should. During the two-and-a-half years I owned the truck, the amount of time I spent online looking at cars was obsessive, compulsive, and unhealthy—a step change from previous years where it was merely excessive. Granted, the fact that I’m self-employed, work from home, and nearly all my income comes from writing tends to plant me in front of the computer in a quasi-professional mode for much of the day, and there’s a thin line between banging out content for my paying gigs versus time spent on social media, where I’m less verbose but perhaps even more entertaining. The point is that buying the truck and having it in the driveway seemed to kick what was already a high-OCD car-searching habit into overdrive, injecting methamphetamine straight into my automotive brain, but it was justifiable because the acts of searching online—for reference material for something I was writing, finding ridiculous cars I could make fun of on my Facebook page, and endlessly pounding the interwebs looking for that elusive rust-free Series 2 Fiat 124 Sport Coupe (or whatever I was infatuated with at the time)—all blended into one another.
When I wrote that I sold the truck but kept the little Winnebago Rialta RV (the VW Eurovan with a Winnebago camper body on it), a number of folks asked me why I didn’t instead sell the Rialta, keep the truck, and buy a travel trailer and a car-towing trailer if that’s what I kept saying I needed? It’s a reasonable question. Some of it was driveway space (I simply don’t have the room here in Newton, Massachusetts, for trailers), but the larger part is that my wife and I like the little 21-foot Rialta. We like the fact that it’s closer to an old-school VW camper than to a real RV, and we appreciate the ability to drive and park it nearly anywhere. We’ve used it mainly to do a few days at a time at the beach. We’ve never done any real long-haul RVing in it. So thinking of using the truck to tow a well-appointed travel trailer was like opening up a blade on a Swiss Army knife that you never really have any intention of using.
Going back to the Suburban for a bit, you’d think that owning both the truck and the Rialta, I’d have covered all the bases of what the ’Burb did in a single vehicle, but that’s not accurate. I owned the Suburbans because I could fit nine people, coolers, a Coleman grill, chairs, plus boogie boards, fishing rods, a surfboard, and a windsurfer strapped to the roof and drive it all onto soft sand. ’Burbs did this astonishingly well. The RV certainly can’t do this, and it’s a forced fit for the truck. I had one geophysical survey in 2011 looking for unexploded ordnance on Martha’s Vineyard’s Cape Pogue where I had to put the truck on sand, requiring me to deflate the duallie rear tires, and it was not exactly convenient. And as a people-mover, the truck’s extended cab could fit five, but that was all. The RV appears cavernous inside, but it only has seat belts for three (the two front seats and a single seat in the coach).
Looking at it cargo-wise, obviously nothing came close to the truck with its 8-foot bed and utility body. But once my mother’s house was sold, the window of its use largely passed. Still, I kept thinking that, if I sold it, how would I snag a Honda tracked snow blower being sold way below market value in August? But then summer passed. And besides, there was no way to get a snowblower into the back without ramps, and I didn’t own them. Then I realized that if I was going to need to rent a little trailer to move a snowblower, I could use the Rialta, as that’s just about all its trailer hitch can handle.
I laughed when, two days after I sold the truck, my oldest son asked me about driving 80 miles each way to Springfield to buy a mattress, bed frame, drawers, and a nightstand. Although the Rialta has a full-time queen-sized bed inside, all that space has to be accessed through the small side door (that big rear window isn’t on a hatch and doesn’t open up). The Rialta did swallow the bed, but it had to be forced down its throat.
Of course, towing-wise, while the Suburbans were capable of hauling home a car on a U-Haul trailer, the Silverado with its Duramax diesel could’ve easily towed a ramp truck with five Suburbans on it across the country, and the fact that it was such massive overkill for the pedestrian tasks I subjected it to was one of the reasons I let it go. The final time I used the truck was when my wife said that a friend of hers was getting rid of all of her tomato grow boxes and related supplies. Maire Anne grows tomatoes on the garage roof and, like me when I see a well-priced car or guitar, wanted to pounce before someone else grabbed the goods. She wasn’t sure if she could squeeze it all into her little Honda Fit hatchback, so we took the truck. Hauling tomato boxes was one final example of what massive overkill this vehicle—which my old job had bought to tow a 32-foot trailer cross country—was for this kind of leafy-suburb errand-running.
But with all that rationalization of why I should let it go, immediately after I sold the truck I felt viscerally hobbled. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I found a cool must-buy vehicle, I was at a significant disadvantage, as I couldn’t show up in the hunt-and-kill position of power. Never mind the fact that I had the opportunity in August to do exactly that with a well-priced TVR 2500M on Long Island and bailed on the trip, a decision I now regret (in my defense, my wife’s recent cardiac surgery and the impending sale of my mother’s house were significant pre-occupying factors).
For a few weeks after the sale, I put a lot of effort into looking for a replacement truck. Rather than another Suburban, I gravitated toward Honda Ridgelines, as the fact that they’re unibody vehicles (the same platform as the Odyssey minivan and the Pilot SUV, and front-wheel drive until they need four-wheel-drive traction) with a significantly more car-like ride was appealing to someone who has infrequent towing needs. Used Ridgelines are as thick as flies on poo, and 200K examples show up as low as $3500, but as with any vehicle, finding one that’s at the knee of the curve of cost and mileage, and appears to be in decent condition, and is nearby (since, of course, I no longer have a truck to use to tow home a truck), made it a narrow needle to thread. At some point I had the epiphany that I was spending obsessive time looking for a truck I didn’t really want or need since I sold the last truck because I didn’t really need it. I put the whole matter on the back burner, at least for now.
So, I’m truck-less, in some sense for the first time since 2008. And I’m OK with that.
But if I see an ad that says “1963 Jaguar E-Type ran when parked five years ago no rust stored indoors sold house must go $5300 to the first one who shows up with truck and trailer,” hooo boy, am I going to be pissed.
***
Rob’s latest book, The Best Of The Hack Mechanic™: 35 years of hacks, kluges, and assorted automotive mayhem is available on Amazon here. His other seven books are available here on Amazon, or you can order personally-inscribed copies from Rob’s website, www.robsiegel.com.
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Rob, great description of you cognitive dissonance now on with the task at hand. Due to room constraints and the fact that you do not need to transport a crew of 9 (surburban) or tow a 32ft car hauler. My o suggest you find a used Full size Chevy Blazer / GMC Jimmy (1999) I believe was the last year they were produced. It gives you 5 passenger 4 wheel drive and will tow a single car trailer. Also a full size Bronco (I think OJ owned one). If you can get by with 3 passengers a a short wheel base short bed regular cab Chevy/GMC 1/2 ton 4×4 pick up will also work both suggestions yak up far less space then an extended cab long wheel base 1 ton truck
Any time you want to trade you can always leave something interesting in my driveway and borrow my truck. Though I’m about 3 hours away in upstate NY…
Years ago, about 1969, I bought a Chevy pickup, stepside, with 2 fender mounted spares, for a song because the previous owner had overheated the engine, warped the head and blown the head gasket. After a weekend of fixing, it was good as new.
I drove it for the next 20 years. By ten it was so rusty that you could see the engine from the driver’s seat, through the firewall. I could no longer put tires on the fender wells because the fenders were so rusty they were about to fall off. In a moment o weakness, I sold it to a guy who was going to “restore” it, put in a V8, and so forth.
I suffered from pickup truck withdrawal for 6 months. I no longer needed a truck because I no longer did any construction projects, was almost out of the landlord business, and all my house projts were complete. But I couldn’t sleep, knowing I didn’t have a truck.
So i bought a 4 year old El Camino. When I drove it home, my wife said, “Is that really a truck?” But it is the perfect truck for someone who doesn’t work very hard. It’s big enough to bring home car parts, but too small to let me get roped into other guys big projects. Now the El Camino is 40 years old, and wears historic plates. It’s still the perfect truck for me.
In Michigan, there are restrictions on the use of historic plates, though I have never been hassled with any of my vehicles. But now, Michigan lifted all restrictions for the month of August.
That’s a great story . Thanks.
Years ago, about 1969, I bought a Chevy pickup, stepside, with 2 fender mounted spares, for a song because the previous owner had overheated the engine, warped the head and blown the head gasket. After a weekend of fixing, it was good as new.
I drove it for the next 20 years. By then it was so rusty that you could see the engine from the driver’s seat, through the firewall. I could no longer put tires on the fender wells because the fenders were so rusty they were about to fall off. In a moment o weakness, I sold it to a guy who was going to “restore” it, put in a V8, and so forth.
I suffered from pickup truck withdrawal for 6 months. I no longer needed a truck because I no longer did any construction projects, was almost out of the landlord business, and all my house projects were complete. But I couldn’t sleep, knowing I didn’t have a truck.
So I bought a 4 year old El Camino. When I drove it home, my wife said, “Is that really a truck?” But it is the perfect truck for someone who doesn’t work very hard. It’s big enough to bring home car parts, but too small to let me get roped into other guys big projects. Now the El Camino is 40 years old, and wears historic plates. It’s still the perfect truck for me.
In Michigan, there are restrictions on the use of historic plates, though I have never been hassled with any of my vehicles. But now, Michigan lifted all restrictions for the month of August.
Many of the uhaul truck can tow their car haulers.
See: https://www.uhaul.com/Tips/Towing/How-To-Tow-A-Car-With-A-Moving-Truck-27588/
That’s always the back up plan if I get stuck beyond the reasonable range of my insurance tow policy or if I want to buy a project car and don’t have a tow vehicle available.
I usually try to know where the nearest uhaul with an available tow dolly is if I’m looking at a car. Some cities seem to have shortages on uhaul stuff so it’s worth checking to see where you would get a dolly if you do end up buying a car.
Two of the problems with relying on U-Haul is that:
1) They don’t have trailers available near your home city the weekend you need one.
2) If you rely on them having one in the destination city that you’ll rent one way, they email or call you when you’re on the way and tell you that it’s not available.
There is another potential problem:
A few years back, we helped some family members move from Colorado to the Washington coast. They rented a U-Haul box truck and tow dolly for their Kia Optima. We loaded the truck (and my pickup) during the day, and the Kia did errands like bringing us lunch and dinner, so it we weren’t going to hook it up until like 4:00 a.m. just before rolling out. Some suspension parts on the dang Kia was too low to go up on the dolly! So my wife drove it, and (because the U-Haul place didn’t open until 9:00, we just pulled it behind the truck, figuring to drop it at the U-Haul in Salt Lake later that day. Guess what? The SLC U-Haul outlet didn’t carry tow dollies, so wouldn’t take it. We finally got rid of it after pulling it (empty) all the way to Boise, Idaho.
Moral? Check to ensure your car can in fact load onto a U-Haul trailer or tow dolly. Some vehicles won’t go on. We paid to pull an empty dolly, AND gas for the car it was supposed to be hauling, for about 720 useless miles…
Used Ridgelines are infrequent and overpriced where I live. Interesting how locality changes that.
Growing up my Grand Pa usually kept a truck around as a 3rd vehicle. He bought the first one on a whim as it was cheap and he just needed something to get around for a bit. The first Saturday he had it, my Grand Mother sent him out that morning to get bread and milk. He returned 8 hours later with a 4×8 sheet of plywood and some chain link fencing, but no bread and milk. That story always made me laugh so when it came time for me to get my first car, I chose a truck.
I always knew whatever I bought, no matter where I was. I would get it said item home. Not that I needed it whatever it was but it existed; therefore, it was mine. Sadly, it came to its demise, and the very next weekend, my dad needed to buy some plywood. He was so used to having access to mine that he called me from the hardware store and said, “Bring your truck over here and haul home this plywood.” I responded with, “You know my truck is gone, right?” and without missing a beat he said, “Well shoot, Ok come get me and take me to the Dealership I’m finally buying my own truck.”
I would skip any FWD based V6 unibody for a used Chevy LS powered half ton.
Just a better tow vehicle and much easier to maintain and more power.
Yeah, I hear you, and objectively I’m sure you’re right, but having owned six Suburbans and more recently the Silverado, I really have no desire to own a Chevy or any other American full-sized pickup. With a history of working on European cars, every component on a domestic pickup truck feels, to make the obvious joke, foreign to me. With my experience working on my wife’s Honda Fits, the Ridgeline would at least feel somewhat familiar to me.
My BIL really likes his Ridgeline.
It’s a good city vehicle, light duty hauler, good on snow and icy pavement. Terrible in rocky off-road stuff.
It tows okay, not great, and certainly not like a half ton. 4,000-4,500 lbs is the practical limit, especially on long grades. Out west, heavy weight and long grades roast that transmission.
But if that weight limit is good for your needs and you’re going to hang out east of the Rockies, you’ll probably be alright.
I banzai’d up to I70 and over to Des Moines and back with a 2700 lbs equipment trailer to get another Iowa corn-fed Buick. Something about a HD turbo diesel and traveling the speed limit, no toasty transmissions, no A/C shut-off, me chugging energy drinks and 5-hr energy like a sociopath, not a care in the world.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’d expect of the Ridgeline, thanks. I expected that I’d keep the truck and live the life in your second paragraph, but it just didn’t work out that way.
I agree with hyperv6’s suggestion. I’m currently agonizing over the thought of selling my GMC Dually, which is a much tighter fit in my suburban (oof) garage than it was in the shop I had before moving. While I could replace it for most all my needs with a used half-ton, the Dually is practically family by now and I flat love the thing. And it ain’t gonna sit outside as long as I own it…
What was wrong with the following:
~ Sell Rialta
~ Sell utility body off truck
~ Buy slide-in camper for truck
You could generally leave the camper on and retain towing ability (while taking up only a truck’s footprint in the driveway), could take the camper off temporarily if you needed to haul anything in the bed, would have as nice of a living space as the Rialta (and be just as easy to maneuver/park), and would actually be using the truck as a 3500 (high payload with the camper while towing)
The Rialta does appear it can hit most of your needs. I have so little use for a truck so I don’t have one but if I did I have family with one.
I had an 83 suburban. It was a wonderful vehicle – we lived in S. Alberta and it would always start even unplugged (block heater mandatory in AB) in -30 weather. The wide track tires would follow in transit bus tracks in the deep snow unlike other vehicles. Loved it though it was rusty as heck.
Never had a pickup until late ’90s when I got a Dodge D10. Teeny truck with a concrete-filled gas pipe bumper. That survived a few hit-and-run (when parked) accidents that did more damage to the runner than the D50. It finally died when the timing belt went on the engine and took out all the valves.
Eventually got an 08 Ford Ranger which I loved. It died in a Christmas day horrific snowstorm accident. I now have a Toyota Tacoma that I really love.
I don’t tow much but I do SCUBA dive all the time. The pickup with canopy is perfect because you really don’t want salt water (taking off gear after dive) inside a vehicle. Besides, the pickup tailgate is perfect height for getting geared up or down, plus lots of hold-downs for bins and tanks and such. I would not want to be without some type of pickup these days.
Rob, I hope I never have to make the decision to sell my last truck(s). I’ve had a truck in the driveway or beside the hobby shop for the last 30+ years. Always just a 1/2 ton for hauling building material, engines, transmissions, or towing boats to the lake. Now I’ve got two by the shop because my buddy’s neighbor was selling a running F-150 for $600 since they were moving & didn’t want to spend money for brakes, tires, and a few bolt on body parts. I’m a GM guy usually, but it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. When I kick the bucket I don’t think the wife will have any trouble selling them.
Your reluctance to own a GM or other domestic truck makes sense to me — they are different beasts and require different thinking, equipment, and approaches. My 5’4″ wife’s favourite vehicle of the hundred or so we have cycled through over the decades is the huge 1976 ¾ ton Suburban with a 454, on propane, that we had for a while in the 1990s. Fabulous in winter on its 16″ snow tires, but ate exhaust gaskets and was rusting fast. We used it for such jobs as driving 1,100 km through the mountains in winter, on 2-lane roads, to the west coast in one day, hauling a load of bricks 8’x4’x 2 feet high — imagine the weight! — and rescuing lesser vehicles from snowdrifts. It was righteously skookum. I loved it too, but aside from changing the oil, servicing the transmission — the clearance was so high I practically crawled under it — and swapping out the tires in fall and spring, I lacked the equipment to work on it: a hoist and good power tools in particular (in the 1990s in Canada, only mechanics and rich people had either — and I am neither). So I sold it, with great regret. I am much more comfortable working on my 2006 Mercedes, or a VW.
I’m totally stealing “It was righteously skookum.”
Rob, I’m in a similar pickle to you. I own an ’07 Dakota with the 4.7 litre V8. It’s not great for towing big stuff but I did use it to tow a U-Haul car trailer loaded with my son’s Subaru wagon all the way from central BC to southern Alberta. The truck has 215,000 km on it and only has a little rust above one rear wheel.
My pickle is the engine is starting to have piston-slap in one cylinder. I’m told that that is the engine’s death knell.
Two things to do: 1. Find a low mileage 4.7 at a wrecker (which might be very tough to find) or 2. Have a mechanic partially rebuild the engine.
In the meantime I often lay awake trying to figure it out. I’d like something that size or bigger but my garage won’t take anything longer plus I’m concerned that gasoline powered pickups are also on their death knell. My Grandfather raised purebred Clydesdales. Maybe I should go back to those for hauling stuff.