Invasion of the "Big-Ass" Pick-Up Trucks

It was a sunny Sunday as I drove to work in my  Honda. I toyed with the idea of being able to bike to work. But I live in Hamilton so living atop the Niagara Escarpment while working in the lower city all but excludes such brave environmentally friendly gestures. That and the fact that I don't actually own a bike at present.

Truck Toyz

At this point, I need to mention that  a pet-peeve of mine for quite some time, has been the growing number of big-assed pick-up trucks on the road. Not for any reasons related to the environment. But simply because they are a nuisance. Yes, a great number of them may well be "work" vehicles, but an ever increasing number also seem to be doubling as family vehicles as well. You see them everywhere, huge gas-guzzling beasts in pristine condition, complete with Children's car seats in the back. Yes, most of these monsters aren't just two seaters anymore. They come with club cabs, meaning there's additional seating space for the "chillins" and the family pets in addition to the usual cargo space.

I won't get into the psychology behind the surge in these enviro-terrors, so I shall refrain from making any comparisons between Freud's theory behind gun ownership and the current obsession with big-assed Pick-Ups. But it is a given that they are purchased almost exclusively by men.

The "Macho" image

But back to my sunny Sunday. I happened to notice on my usual 20 minute drive to work, that there seemed to be more of these behemoths on the road than usual, snarling things up on narrow side streets while forcing smaller vehicles to bow to their will on the main roads.  I wondered if it just "seemed" like there was a larger number of them on the road because of my being hyper-aware of them, or if there was in fact, a huge amount of these things about, helping to contribute to the financial success of the Tar Sands  while adding to the growing number of asthmatics in the city. I wondered to myself why there would be  a growing number of these Pick-Ups on the road when the amount of oil in the ground is shrinking by the day, bringing us ever closer to global economic Armageddon, and especially now when there is such awareness about the harm fossil fuels are doing to our environment. What ever the reason though, I was determined to do a little quasi-research when I was done work, just to see if I was imagining a "Pick-Up conspiracy" or not.

When my commitments for the day were complete, it was late afternoon though still quite sunny out. What I resolved to do was to drive around the city for one hour and actually count vehicles. But just knowing the number of Pick-Up trucks alone that I came into contact with seemed quite useless without that number being compared with other larger family type vehicles. So I divided a piece of paper into four parts labeled "Pick-ups", "SUVs", "Mini-Vans" and "Crossovers". My idea was to keep a running tally.

It soon became apparent that keeping a running tally of vehicles while driving was not only hugely inefficient (I missed a lot of vehicles), but pretty unsafe as well. So I trolled through parking lots counting vehicles. I started at the Staff Parking Lot for the Hamilton Wentworth Detention Centre, a Male Dominated workplace for sure. The number of Pick-Ups went up. Then I went to a Walmart Parking lot and the number of Mini-Vans increased. But then I decided to prowl around some quiet residential neighborhoods where I could pull over at anytime to count vehicles. Much to my surprise, the number of these big-assed Pick-Ups increased in the quiet subdivisions. Now I should point out here that I did not include obvious work vehicles in my totals, only vehicles that seemed to have no other purpose than to be a means of personal or family transportation.

So after my hour's research, I found that Mini-Vans were the most used of the larger "personal" type vehicles at approximately 175,  thereby dispelling the myth of the decline and fall of the Mini-Van. SUVs of all makes and sizes totaled approximately 150. The number of "Cross Overs" was quite low by comparison at roughly 50. It should be noted that with all these types of vehicles, the drivers were observed to be almost equally men and woman. In the same period of time, I counted just over 100 huge-honking Pick-Ups. Again, these were not obvious work vehicles though some of them might well have been. These were the finely polished, club cab sportin, status symbols driven almost exclusively by men. So of the roughly 475 larger private vehicles I counted , a little over 20%, or one in five of these, were Pick-Up trucks. Indeed I am not imagining things.

But alas, my methodology was far from scientific. It did not take into consideration such things as days of the week, time of day, traffic patterns or rural vs urban  settings. And I did not count regular "cars" either to compare with my other numbers . So home I went to go online to search for some hard numbers. This is what I came up with:

For the first seven months of 2011, the highest selling new vehicles in the *U.S. were Ford F-Series Pick-Up trucks at a little over 300,000 in total sales. The Next was the Chevy Silverado (Pick-Ups) at just over 200,000. Then came the Toyota Camry (family car) at 175,000 then the Toyota Carola, Toyota Matrix (both family cars) and Ford Escape (SUV) all tied at about 150,000.

Yes, a good number of these Pick-Up trucks are going to be bonafide work vehicles, meaning they serve a specific purpose and are more than just show pieces.  But when the F-Series out sells the leading family car by more than 50%, it has to be wondered just how many of them are doing double-duty as family vehicles and over sized play-toys. How many are "non-essential".

But it also makes me wonder, with the price of gasoline firmly fixed above $1.25 a liter (at least here in Hamilton) and not likely to ever go below $1.20 again, why on earth would the car-buying public purchase gas guzzling beasts as a vehicle of "choice". With the fuel consumption of a Pick-Up being about double that of a family car and almost twice the price to purchase new, one has to wonder, does the average American/Canadian vehicle purchaser truly have their head up their ass??

And aside from the exorbitant cost of these beasts that have become prized possessions of the upwardly mobile middle-class, and the fact that they are contributing to our hurtling toward  global economic collapse when the supply of gasoline can no longer keep up with the demand, what of their environmental impact?

A Tailings Pond at the Tar Sands

Large Petroleum  companies are eagerly scouring oil from the earth in Alberta and leaving an environmental catastrophe in their wake, just to feed our ever growing addiction to Oil. We know this to be true, yet the car buying public seems to want to purchase ever bigger, more costly, more wasteful vehicles rather than smaller ones to help conserve on gas, to help reduce the toxic gasses our cars emit in addition to limiting the amount of greenhouse gasses the Tar Sands emits as it scurries to feed our collective addiction.

So while it is easy for us all to point our boney fingers at the big oil companies and the politicians who continue to profit from the unbridled sales of fossil fuels. "We the People" are not in the least bit blameless. We recycle a few cans and proudly proclaim that we are doing our bit for the planet. But when it comes down to making a concerted life-style choice like in the purchase of a vehicle for our families our just for ourselves, vanity and status seems to continue to hold trump and we are therefore just as much to blame for this crisis as the money grubbing Corporatists who eagerly feed our addiction.

* Figures courtesy of WardsAuto.com. Figures from goodcarbadcar.net show that in Canada, The Ford F-Series followed by Dodge Ram Pick-Ups to be numbers 1 and 2 in total sales with the Honda Civic being a distant third. Neither site listed Smart cars, which are rated at over 90mpg, on their list of top 25 selling cars in either the U.S., or Canada.