Some might question the wisdom of acquiring a twelve year old truck with a few rusty corners and a broken radio. Then again, I’m used to getting strange looks from people so naturally I did just that this week. So long fun little red car. You were a blast but you can’t haul plywood and topsoil which is precisely what I need to do with a vehicle these days.
It didn’t take long for me to remember the guilty pleasures of driving a huge road beast like this new-to-me Dodge truck. If ever there was a perfect vehicle in my past it was my beloved Nissan Titan from a few years back that got me up and down the mountainside so effortlessly, even in subzero blizzards. Alas that trusty old friend didn’t make sense when I first landed here in the flat lands and with petrol running at $1.65 a litre back then it was $200 just for a fill up. And with me driving from one end of the Maritimes to the other shopping for land. No, the red car swap made sense then just like switching back to this vintage truck cousin does now. Surprisingly the little red car was worth more than the elderly truck despite the fact that you could fit the former into the back of the latter. My stretched budget didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of pain.
Canada really does love its trucks and while that might seem an odd obsession at first, here in the wide country we really do use the monsters. Hauling to camping, many need to move some pretty treacherous loads over daunting distances. Certainly there are plenty of ‘vanity’ truck owners among the city dwellers but when you include weather and workload in the count, fewer than you might first guess. Nothing tackles a heap of snow like climbing into a workhorse that towers above the drifts with all four wheels spinning power into chaos for would-be icy obstacles. And for a tall guy like me it’s nice not to have my head scraping the roof and my legs doing origami in the cramped confines of a little cockpit. I had also forgotten the vantage point you get from a few feet higher off the roadway and how much more solid the ride feels. It’s as if I’m the Godzilla truck tromping through the streets of Kyoto with frightened sedan villagers running amok for cover. Would one of these beasts make sense on the temperate streets of London? Not a chance. I doubt most in the mega-pickup truck class would even fit onto any cobblestone-ridden lane you care to name. But if you’re dragging a trailer brimming with construction supplies out to the homestead in the brush, you need a big truck. Do I enjoy a vehicle that drinks petrol like a socialite guzzles champagne? Not really but it’s the right tool for the job at hand.
Now that I’m more geographically settled, my circle of vehicle travel is drastically less that you might imagine even given the expanse that is Canada. I have a few years history that shows I drive a whopping 4000 kilometres a year on average if left to my own devices. That in the mileage scheme of things is a drop in the proverbial bucket. Most people in Canada clock up between 15-30K a year but with me working at home and being frugal with my shopping jaunts into the village, I’m officially classified as a ‘low volume driver’. It even gets me a discount on my insurance.
That’s why I don’t feel horribly guilty about owning this gas-guzzling beast. I’ve already decided that if and when I find a need for frequent drives down to the big city or points west like Quebec and Ontario, I’m going all electric. Not even hybrid – pure electricity. Nissan’s new third generation 30KwH model Leaf has drastically more range than earlier versions and with even the local village here sporting a city centre charging station now, I feel the time has come to dive all-in on electric if you’re racking up the miles. The map, even out here in slow-to-adapt Nova Scotia, is freckled with power points and more popping up every week. The long rumoured ‘affordable’ Tesla is coming soon and even the Kia Soul is posting some impressive range numbers. In a few years when I have the solar panels up on the farm and the need arises, all these contenders should have matured enough to really make the case for petrol-based locomotion moot.
Oddly, I’m not really a ‘car and truck guy’. I couldn’t care less about Top Gear or Motorweek and have never seen the point of ‘motor sports’. The engine fascination gene is simply not in my DNA. Renewable energy however really gets my geek brain going and it’s a favourite topic, from solar sine wave inverters to microhydro Pelton wheels. Not surprisingly when you replace all the filthy oil-coated parts of a car with batteries and a supercomputer, it becomes infinitely more interesting to me. One of my favourite web series on the topic of electric cars and renewables in general is “Fully Charged“, hosted by the always funny and highly informative Robert Llewellen of Red Dwarf fame who has been self-producing the series for years now. Check out his videos and chip in if you like what you see with his Patreon Campaign. Well done Bobby!
Until that new electronic dawn hits my driveway, I’m going to enjoy these final months of petrol-driven madness and cart all sorts of pointy construction kit and stinky garden things around in the back of this Big Black Beast. It will be handy when I have to move all my worldly goods the gruelling four kilometres from the apartment to the homestead and the huge hoarkin’ engine has enough power to pull, push, and otherwise muscle all manner of farm duties into submission once I’m there. Four-wheel drive and ample towing capacity means the world of Canadian snowplows and landscape trailers is also open to me now even if it is destined to eventually be just the ‘farm truck’ and sit parked next to the barn most days.
The inside trim was top of the line back in its day and the kind old man that owned it took reasonably good care over the years. I suppose now I’M the old man although I have a few good years left on my odometer, just like the truck. It’s big enough and all the seats fold flat so that worst case scenario, I’ll wager I could even sleep in the blasted thing if need be. Now if I can only sort out how to fix the radio.
