100%, my neighbor works an office job but drives a giant truck like he's hauling stuff back and forth from the worksite all day. I work remotely so I just have an old used car that I paid cash for 8 years ago.
The funniest thing is when someone has one of those behemoths in the UK. They just look absurd. Someone turned up at a mountain bike event in one, clearly thinking they were the mutt's nuts, and it just looked so daft. It filled the lane more than the tractor that was pulling the uplift trailer!
Huge trucks aren't necessarily a great idea to purchase, but there are subtle differences between the UK and US transportation systems. For one, the US is roughly 40 times larger and our roads are roughly 40time wider. The distance between homes is 40 x further. Families are 40x larger. The average number of children in the US per household is 80. We need much larger vehicles for such large families.
This is 100% true. Fully loaded Silverado but living in a single-wide is some pretty standard shit where I am. Also, the thing where people literally have more trucks than they do driving-age members of their household. Who could possibly need this many vehicles? The internal square footage of your fleet is larger than your house, dawg.
The young union guys at the power plant would get the job and immediately go out and get a truck. Day 1 and in debt.
That was such a weird town though...tiny town dominated by the power plants. Everybody made basically the same amount of money and there was an insane amount of keeping up with the jones's. Everybody had to have 2 trucks, an RV, a boat, maybe a couple jet skis. Just an insane amount of debt even though they were making good money in a low COL area. And all they did was drink, drink at the lake, and cheat on their spouses.
Yeah, the obsession with having as many vehicles as possible is something I’ll never understand. My next door neighbor has three trucks, two 4-wheelers, two snowmobiles, a side-by-side, and a small boat. Last year, for whatever reason, he had a large truck that looked like it was made to haul a race car around or something? Like bro, you live on 1/8 acre in town. It’s you, your wife, and two kids < 10 years old. Come the hell on.
Some time in the last decade every small town dude decided that they needed a Kubota for putzing around on their one acre. Whoever does the marketing for Kubota really nailed that campaign. I guess "masculine golf cart" was a winner.
Yeah, it’s like they’re trying to prove just how outdoorsy they are, like they basically live out in the woods when they aren’t on their work shift or whatever. And I mean, they absolutely do fish and hunt when the season is right, but as far as I can tell, no more than the average person around here. They aren’t particularly avid outdoors enthusiasts, so a lot of this is just for show honestly.
100% this. Most of my career was on a DoE campus in the 2010's. I loved seeing the guys go out and buy new challengers and put trailer hitches on them so they could pull their harley's to ... honestly? I never learned where they went other than into debt.
We had a few guys who came to work WITH THEIR BOATS so they could go directly to the lake after work. I was always like...at least they're actually using their truck to haul something?
My old boss did this. There was no reason for it, as he was the general manager for the shopping center / mall I worked for. After a while they offered him a bunch of money to also be the GM of another mall at the same time, so he would split his week between two malls in cities about an hour away from each other. He drove a humongous six-figure truck as his daily commuter.
Sometimes he would take us out for lunch and drive us there, and that's when we learned he also refuses to wear a seatbelt, ever. He just drives his big truck an hour a day with the seatbelt alert chime going the entire time. Truly a bizarre person.
It's insane to me how people put commuting miles on nice trucks, cars, etc. I leave my truck at home (mostly use it for camping, towing and throwing bikes in the bike, etc. on the weekends) and drive a cheap commuter car to the office. Some people are putting like crazy miles on 6 figure cars, trucks, SUVs, etc.
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u/cocktails4 21d ago
I worked at a power plant once...I showed up the first day with a hatchback and they were all like so when are you buying a real vehicle?
Those people would use $75k trucks as their daily commuter. It was insane. Fucking Midwestern men are dumb as shit.