The Magic of Beater Trucks (long)

I’m in Seattle staying with one of my best friends and his family. He’s been bothering me to come out and see his new house for a long time, so I took the opportunity to join him for his New Year’s Eve party and to stick around and do some work in the Pacific Northwest.

He and his family have been outrageously generous, and it’s been a great way to start off my new venture. They have plenty of space, and provided a basement bedroom, my own bathroom, and let me take over his home office for a few days.

Better than that, my buddy loaned me his 1996 Ford four-by-four. It’s a blue club cab rig with 122,000 miles and a banged-up right fender that spent it’s former life hauling a horse trailer over the local passes. The seat is sacked out, the driver’s side window doesn’t roll down, and the ball joints are so shot the truck practically weaves down the freeway. I love driving it.

You see, I’m a pickup guy. I found my first truck sitting in the weeds while riding motorcycles with buddies. It was a 1940 Chevy nearly buried in the grass behind Bill Burdick’s house, about eight miles from my childhood home north of Brill, Wisconsin. I remember the musty smell when we climbed inside, and the excitement of talking about where we’d drive it if we got it running. I asked Bill if he’d sell the truck, and he was more than happy to get it off his property. We used my neighbor’s tractor to tow the rig down the narrow trail behind Bill’s house and down the 8 miles of pavement and gravel that led to my parent’s home on the Brill River.

We put it in my yard, next to the garage my Dad had built by my uncle and his long-haired crew in 1968, and there that truck sat. I tried to jump start it with Dad’s truck, but my skills were not up to turning the rusted relic into a runner.

The truck sat in the yard for a year or so, and my Dad finally got sick of it and I sold it to a neighbor kid for $40, pretty pleased at the tidy profit I netted on the Chevy.

More importantly than a ten-dollar windfall, I learned the joys of sitting in a truck, hanging your arm out in the breeze.

I ended up spending most of high school driving my Dad’s 1979 Ford F-150 around the countryside, where my truck guy roots were solidified. During college, I mostly drove motorcycles and shunned four-wheeled transportation, with the exception of an old Buick Electra 225 handed down from my folks and a gold 1973 Cadillac my grandmather bought me to haul my stuff home from California after a one-year stint in school there that turned into an extended lesson in surfing, making printed circuit boards, and how the two made it nigh impossible for me to focus enough to get good grades in school. My dreams of attending Berkeley sunk with my GPA, and I came back to the University of Minnesota for my education.

Once I graduated and found myself with a job that paid more than $10 an hour, I promptly returned to my pickup truck roots and bought a early 1980s Ford two-wheel-drive work truck that was clean, had low miles, a faded-out blue topper, and crank windows. That truck was enlisted for hauling motorcycles, dead deer at the cabin, and me to work and all places inbetween.

That truck aged and passed on, and was replaced with a 1995 black F150 that was one of my favorite trucks. I still think that body style is the best one Ford has had, maybe ever, and I just love the way those trucks feel inside.

I’ve been flirting with non-pickups during the past six years, starting with a 2002 Nissan Xterra that I loved dearly but couldn’t haul anything. I went back to a 1997 Ford F150, but didn’t enjoy parking and driving the truck around the Cities, plus the gas mileage was atrocious, so I bought myself an Audi Avant Quattro that gets reasonable gas mileage, has plenty of room to haul camera equipment, and is a joy to drive. I really love the car but . . . it isn’t a truck.

So getting into Sammy’s 1996 reminded me that, well, I’m a pickup truck guy. I love the way you sit up high and look down on everyone but truckers and the misguided Yuppies driving Hummers to the grocery store. I love that you can turn your head and see through that big flat pane of glass whether or not anyone is behind you. I love bouncing over curbs and not worrying about grinding undercarriage or damaging delicate fenders.

I love the cozy feel of the cab, which has just enough room for you, a shot gun, a friend and a dog. And I like the fact that a woman can sit right next to you on that big bench seat if she wants, maybe shift it for you if it’s manual.

There’s also nothing better than being able to throw in a load of gravel or a couple sheets of plywood. You forget what a hassle getting things that home is until you have a car and have to hook up a trailer every time you want to do a little home improvement.

And I really like having a truck with some miles on it, something that already has had the new vehicle shine worn off by branches scraping it as you bounce down the trail. Bounce a few cement blocks off the side of the box, back into a tree while hauling wood, or maybe scrape it up against a parking meter or two. Then you’ve got a truck, because a little scrape doesn’t mean nothing.

A good friend of mine had a white four-wheel-drive Ford that got sideswiped bad, hammered and battered so badly that the tires stuck out past the smashed fenders. He jimmied the door so it would open, cashed the insurance check, and drove the truck for another six months before buying himself a new one. He loved that truck. Loved how it looked mean, and loved the fact that when he took it up the muddy trails that lead up the mountain to his hunting spot, the mud flew off the exposed tires and covered the truck with huge chunks of black, wet Colorado soil.

My brother-in-law is the proud owner of the Ford That Won’t Die. He calls the truck his Cash Cow because it’s been wrecked and paid for by insurance companies so much it’s more than paid for itself. The truck has nearly 300,000 miles on it, and has been run ragged, dry, and hammered into everything you can imagine serving as a mule for my brother-in-law’s business.

During Christmas, said brother-in-law and I made a newspaper run from my grandmother’s house in B.F.N., Wisconsin to the little gas station in Greenwood (Near BFE), and I picked up a copy of the Tradin’ Times, a local paper that features anything and everything for sale, trucks included. I found a dozen trucks for sale with 150,000 or so miles priced less than what you’d spend on a good computer.

Next decent check that comes in, damned if I’m not going to go buy me one of those.