The Rise and Fall of the Pickup Truck
By Jonathan Weber , 2-03-09
For 27 years, the top-selling vehicle of any kind in the U.S. has been the Ford 150 pickup truck. But a terrific piece by Josh Levin at Slate suggests that its long reign may be coming to an end. Gas prices are of course one big reason: "As prices spiked above $4 per gallon in May and June, the F-150 was overtaken on the monthly sales charts by a bunch of puny sedans with good fuel economy: the Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry, and Honda Civic," Levin writes. "With the 2008 F-150s failing to sell, Ford had to delay the launch of the 2009 model for two months while it pushed the previous year's trucks off the lot at deep discounts, cutting into those $4,000-per-vehicle profit margins.
But there's more to it than that, as any Westerner knows all too well: "There's also the problem that trucks are generally more expensive than cars. Times are good in Trucktown when people are buying pickups they don't really need. In a recession, there will be an inevitable falloff in purchases by the "I'm cool if I drive a truck" demographic. Even worse for the automakers, the economic crisis has cut into the base of customers who buy trucks they do need—if a contractor can't get any work, he's not going to need a new F-150 to lug around his tools."
Levin also offers some entertaining insights on pickup truck marketing, along with plenty of numbers. Check it out.
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My dad and I had just finished a morning hunt around and over an eleven thousand foot peak called Big Mountain in Central Utah. A simple name but a hard hunt. The thin air hike made us appreciate the melted Snickers and warm Pepsi at the truck.
The truck, Dad’s 1997 Ford F-250, had never looked more beautiful sitting in the mid-day sun at The Willow Bunch, killing time. We rested ourselves on the tailgate and ate, listening to the wind whisper deceit through the yellow quaky leaves about where the big deer where. The sound of another truck churning down the muddy Reeder Ridge road broke the meditation.
“Who’s crazy enough to be here?”
“Let’s go home, I hate people.”
“We’ll just have to get of the road and you won’t have to worry about them.”
“That’s true.”
An older, (and by older I mean mid-1980’s) light brown Chevy came up the road spitting mud like curse words off the tire chains that clung to its heavily lugged tires.
“At least it’s old.”
“Hey that looks like old ______________ _______________”
“I believe it is.”
_____________ ______________ hunted with my old man in the years after the Vietnam War. Ten to twelve men from Spring City, veterans mostly, camped together during the rifle deer and elk hunts (there really weren’t any other hunts back then). It must have been something about what their war experience did to them, but these guys were stubborn about hunting with their sons. We, the sons, camped and drank pop, and watched our fathers drink…whatever…and play cards and they taught us. We learned to put tire chains on bias ply tires and we learned to get off the road for truck coming down toward us and we learned to recognize men by the trucks they drove, trucks they drove year after year.
He asked Dad:
“What are you doing with that new truck up here?”
(Note: you see where I come from trucks built in the 90’s with less that 250,000 miles on them are still ‘new’)
“It’s my only truck.”
“I just got this one, but it’s not nothing like that ’69 I had.”
“Nothing ever will be.”
In the glory days before ATVs and camouflage and SUVs and sportsmen’s conventions and all that, in those exceptional days, men drove trucks in the mountains. Dad’s hunting party liked to hunt the top, so they had exceptional trucks. _____________ ________________’s blue 69 Chevy was one of these.
Dad told me a story of the time when their tent was left over the weekend between the elk hunt and deer hunt in Mill Fork of Black Canyon. It snowed. They chained up, and together, their 4x4s with the 69 in front. Mill Fork, like many of our ten thousand foot basins, is scored by ditches that carry water from the snow banks that remain in the high “bowl” into the waning days of summer. These ditches had been filled by the drifting snow and were as impossible to see as the road that led to their tent.
They decided to disentangle themselves and see if the lead truck could stumble onto the road. As the Chevy spun and bounced through the drifted snow, it crashed face first into one the ditches and a thick blanket of snow blew up into the frozen air and plunged down covering the headlights and hood and windshield. The truck sputtered then died and its lights became instantly dark.
“I guess he’s not on the road.”
“Guess not.”
The small talk was broken by the bellow of a V8, lights and blasted snow and a truck jumped from the ditch and on toward the tent.
Dad’s first truck, a 1977 Ford half ton with a strait six, is legendary in the minds of my brothers and I.
Undersized? Never, not once.
That truck saved my life a number of times and Tim still drives it when he can afford the gas.
“Were you guys in such and such canyon?”
“Yep.”
“We saw that white Ford and knew it was you.”
That’s what I mean, man, the world’s gone crazy, and I can’t recognize anyone by their truck any more.