IncredibleUsed Trucks – Short Article

bobbyjones| February 27, 2010 | No Comments

Cheap wagons frequently get a bad name. Often the concept is that used tow trucks make no sense. They do not regularly get good mileage. They are huge, frequently loud and seldom terribly pretty. Here’s why old pickups should be valued, not scorned.

1. Poor mileage, compared to what?

My 1980 Plymouth Arrow Pickup gets twenty-five miles per gallon. My 1976 Chevy C-10 gets fifteen miles per gallon. Comparable new vans are loads more dynamic, but not too much better on the mileage. So, you will never justify a new truck just on mileage.

2. Energy cost to make a new lorry.

An old auto, car or van, sitting there’s a store of value and energy. All the energy, human and fossil, that went into building that auto is stored right there ready to work. Scrap the car and the majority of that energy isn’t available to be used. Sure, you can recycle the basic materials. You can’t recycle the value-added design and producing that went into that truck. Scrapping useful trucks is a terrible waste.

3. No money time bombs.

Older cars generally are cheap to maintain. That’s's in part because of all the infrastructure that is’s already there to keep them going. Buy the most recent and best and the maintenance issues may be far bigger than you dream. Take batteries. How much will a battery replacement cost for a hybrid down the road? What’s the environmental cost of battery recycling and replacement? These are lurking cash time bombs that may make many newer cars unaffordable for poor people.

4. Parts are everywhere.

Used parts and the people to install them are the way to keep old trucks working. Many autos hit the scrap heap not because they’re worn out or out of fashion. It’s simply because parts are high priced and the abilities to handle that specific model are not common. Drive old Chevy, Ford and Dodge lorries and forget about all that, at least for the moment.

5. Tools not toys.

Trucks are tools like spades and hammers. They can be art objects too. But older lorries keep going because they make sense. Does the newest vehicles stand the test of time? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

Cheap lorries represent plenty of energy and work that’s already been spent. Scrap a lorry and you’ve made unavailable massive amounts of energy invested in planning and putting that machine together. Keeping trucks working is far more environmentally prudent that dumping them and replacing with new.

What about comparing an old Chevy pickup with new great hybrid pickup trucks SUV. No comparison again. Look at what you can move with old trucks and have a look at what your small hybrid will do. The old lorry is a different beast that excels at what it does.

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