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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/03/2017 in Posts

  1. Thanks for all the pretty pictures! Pick-ups are a uniquely American thing - You rarely see them in Europe (not that many in Canada either) and certainly never as a daily driver. When you're paying 6 or 8 bucks a gallon for gas, most people look for something more practical. Unless they had a daily need for hauling or towing, very few would even think of owning one - You do see all sorts of cars with trailer hitches there though. Small cars towing all sorts of trailers is very common and to be honest, for most of us who seldom need to haul things that won't fit in the car, a trailer is a solution which makes lots more sense. When we lived in Germany, I got a kick out of seeing a BMW pulling a trailer full of buckets of paint, ladders and painting supplies! Few families back then had two vehicles and he evidently didn't want to drive a truck for his everyday needs For the record, trailers are much MUCH more regulated there than here. Even a small trailer is required to have operational brakes (and I believe those brakes are required to be self actuating and not controlled by the tow vehicle) whereas here it's not at all uncommon to see a boat and trailer which weigh in excess of a ton and the trailer didn't even come with brakes . . . . not to mention that many trailers which do have brakes have never had them hooked up. You wouldn't get away with that for 10 miles over there But over here where we're blessed with $2 gas, what we drive evidently doesn't need to make much sense, hence the prevalence of trucks doing nothing more than taking one or two persons to work, school, shopping, church and back. To most of the rest of the world, driving a truck when you have so little need for it makes absolutely no sense Of course, there are all sorts of trucks which truly earn a living every day, but here in the USA that amounts to a very small percentage of the pick-ups on the road. It's not at all unusual here to find a 5 or 6 year old truck on a used lot and the bed of the truck looks brand new - It's hardly ever been used to tote things too big of too heavy to carry in a car and it doesn't even have a trailer hitch!! Anyone who has driven anywhere here in the USA would have to admit that the vast majority of pick-ups are being driven around empty with only 1 or 2 passengers - Something you can easily do in a car that costs half as much and gets twice (or 3X) the fuel economy To each his own as to what to buy. For more than 30 years, my #1 criteria when car shopping has always been to look at vehicles which will give me at least 30 miles to a gallon of gas - Oh, I can put up with 20 when it's towing a 1500 pound trailer, but that's 5 or 10% of the time - As opposed to getting 12 or 15 mpg all the time when I only need the capability of the truck 5 to 10% of the time Yes, I think for a $25 fee, Lowes will deliver most anything I buy to my house, but for three or 4 boards that essentially doubles the price of my lumber. No matter what I've bought, the $25 fee just seems excessive because Lowes is less than 4 miles from my house, so if I go pick things up myself, I can stop on the way home and get a free $25 tank of gas instead of paying for a delivery We're still getting used to our TC - It's by far the largest vehicle we've ever owned, but it's also the most luxurious. It's turning out to be a great vehicle for long distance travel, *and* it hauls both of our Segway I2's when we go. Around town, we have a pair of Mitsubishi all electric EV's that we use. We never have to buy any gas unless we're headed out of town on a trip Happy New Year to all you TC owners out there!! Don
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