Trucking Our Way Through the Regulatory Apocalypse
Ford F-150s and Dodge RAMs were shaped not by men, but by chickens
Through the lens of NY photog Lee Friedlander, we see trucks as miniature domestic love affairs: mobile homes, trusted companions, coworkers, carriers of what looks like junk.
Meanwhile, we are denied the use of cheap and super-practical motorized donkeys made by VW, Toyota, Datsun, and Suzuki on the road to the state-mandated nightmare of Elon Musk’s new Cybertruck.
I don’t own a truck. I’ve wanted one, off and on over the years, but the circumstances — financial, familial — have never quite coalesced in the right way to make it happen. The kind of truck that would be ideal for me is a small truck, like an early Ford Ranger or Chevy S-10, but alas I’m not alone in this desire, and supply is limited. These days, in my area of cow-country New York, you need upward of $10,000 for a rusty 4x4 Ranger with well over 100,000 miles on it. The old Tacomas have all been hipsterfied, as have the candy-striped 80s F-150s. It’s not that I love Rangers, which aren’t reliable or powerful or good-looking. It’s that I’m somewhere on the border between lifestyle and utility, and I don’t want a midsize or oversized honker. I drive a rusting early-aughts Mercedes station wagon and I don’t enjoy sitting high over the road. What I want in a truck is a way to bring sheets of plywood home from the lumberyard and get my attic junk to the dump, haul the firewood up to the …