Lexington Herald-Leader

Your gigantic pickup truck may tell more about you than you think. (Not in a good way.)

Paul Prather
Thu, December 1, 2022 at 9:59 AM

When my son was young, he and I took karate lessons together, along my sister-in-law and her young son. The lessons were in Lexington, so the four of us usually drove the 60-some-mile round trip together.

Inevitably, at some point during our weekly journey - often at multiple points - some doofus in a ginormous pickup would fly up right on our car's rear bumper, the truck booming, vibrating and looming over us as if the driver meant to ram us. We'd get out of the way if we could, and then the truck would throttle past us in a deafening roar.

Every time, my sister-in-law would roll her eyes as the pickup disappeared into the distance. She'd hold up a hand, the thumb an inch from the forefinger.

"The bigger the truck, the smaller the ..." she'd say.

Because there were kids in the car she never finished that sentence, but she didn't need to. To her, an oversized truck combined with an overly aggressive driver revealed more than the driver realized: a major insecurity about his manhood. The bigger and louder the pickup, the more dire the lack for which the driver was compensating.

It turns out my sister-in-law was even more correct than I realized.

This isn't to imply a one-to-one correlation between a pickup truck's horsepower and its owner's other, uhm, power centers. Lots of people drive great big pickups because they have great big jobs - pulling backhoes out of muddy culverts, hauling cattle or moving a half-ton of bricks.

I'm in no way, shape or form against either pickups or their owners. In fact, most of my friends own trucks.

But recently I read a fascinating piece in the Washington Post, in which columnist Paul Waldman looked at who drives pickup trucks today and why.

Last year, the three top-selling vehicles in America were pickups.

It turns out that most people who drive pickups (read: suburban white guys) don't do it for practical reasons, but because they see the trucks as declarations of their identity, masculinity and even their political preferences.

Their trucks aren't work tools so much as personal statements.

According to Waldman, the popularity of pickups "took off even as the number of people who actually need one for work - farmers, for example - was steadily declining."

This popularity coincides with larger cultural trends. More and more, men have been shifted from brawny, hands-on labor to sedentary and physically undemanding jobs. Simultaneously there's a heated debate about gender that disparages longstanding ideas of masculinity as toxic. For men, it's a double whammy.

"Conservative men in particular watch with horror the denigration of ... the traditional habits and obligations of manhood," Waldman said.

For his column, Waldman drew heavily on the observations of Mark Metzler Sawin, a historian at Eastern Mennonite University who has studied the meaning of pickup trucks.

"The same impulse that caused people to vote for Trump," Sawin told Waldman, "is also what is causing them to continue to buy pickup trucks: this frustration that the world changed, and it changed in a way that made my life worse - or at least made me less powerful."

Not surprisingly, then, when marketing their products, pickup manufacturers appeal to images of power.

A Dodge Ram TV ad declares, "A man will ask a lot of his truck. Can it tow that? Haul this? Make it all the way over the top of that? Well, isn't it nice to know that the answer will always be: Hell, yes!"

Waldman said, "That imagery is meant to evoke a kind of manhood that embodies self-reliance, competence, mastery over the environment and a physicality most men have no need for in their day-to-day lives."

Indeed, a lot of trucks now are luxury vehicles. Front ends keep getting bigger and bigger and the cabs get roomier and roomier, even as the beds - the business part that hauls stuff - get shorter and shorter. Pickups have bucket seats and state-of-the-art sound systems. F-150s can sell for $100,000.

According to industry data, 75 percent of truck owners actually tow something once a year or less, about 70 percent go off-road once a year or less and more than a third use their trucks for hauling once a year or less, Waldman wrote.

"Owners do, however, cite their desire to 'present a tough image' and 'have their car act as (an) extension of their personality' as reasons to own a pickup," he said.

Pickups have become signifiers. For some guys in some states of mind, their pickup tells everyone else, "My ride is bigger and stronger than your ride. I'm virile. I'm one tough hombre. You'd better get outta my way."

All of this, as I said earlier, tends to make my late sister-in-law look prescient. But in my experience, that's usually the case with women. Typically, the message we guys think we're sending them isn't the message they're receiving. Not at all.

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Dora Hates You

Stay with your prius!!

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"I am not going to be lectured on Gun control by an administration that armed the Taliban"

I drive an F-150 4x4 for work and I can tell you this: you are not taking a lifted $70k truck off road. Mine has dents, tree and barbed wire scratches, a cracked windscreen, a shredded underside and enough mud/dirt on the floorboards to plant a garden. I have punctured the transmission fluid cooler, warped rotors plowing through muck and blown a gasket trying to get unstuck. The shiny truck is nothing but a swagger, and the author is correct, bigger means smaller.



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I was right.

Sadly, most of today's pickups have become a lifestyle or image badge. They are more squishy on the inside than a Cadillac.
Long gone are the days were they were thought of as a tool and was generally the cheapest thing on the sales lot.

Don't get me wrong, love me some trucks. A truck was my first new vehicle purchase, extra cab, 4x4...and I paid $10k total off the lot for it. It wasn't fancy but damn it was a great truck. Now it is a coveted collectors item. For me it was a tool to get off-roading with my buds, go through the snow, and take me places I wanted to be that didn't have any pavement. It was wonderful. And I could hose the cab out out if it got mucky.

Since then I have had several more trucks or truck chassis based vehicles. Some I loved some were meh, it works.

Now the prices compete with halo cars like hellcats, top tier mustangs, even new corvettes. That is kind of ridiculous. And most are mall crawlers or grocery getters that will never see any dirt under their tires or work truck use that requires more than an decent limited slip diff and bed liner. So yeah, there are a lot of people buying them for image and probably some compensation.

So having said that I do appreciate a well sorted truck that had thoughtful mods that are actually useful and not just for looks.

Cole - yep, you don't see the shiny mall crawlers on the Rubicon or other challenging trails. Body/paint damage or ?? is a given. I've been in a 4x4 that rolled and it wasn't fun.



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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC - KV


Edited: 12/03/2022 at 08:24 AM by Bamboo

Quick check on the WEB at Kelly Ford:

F-150 XL (base model ?): $45,635

F-150 Platinum: $82,920

The F-250 Super Duty XL: $55,370

The F-250 Super Duty Lariat tops out at $84,385

A F-150 Raptor Crew Cab is $93,330 in Orlando

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Dora Hates You

Edited: 12/03/2022 at 08:34 AM by dingpatch

Cole - yep, you don't see the shiny mall crawlers on the Rubicon or other challenging trails. Body/paint damage or ?? is a given. I've been in a 4x4 that rolled and it wasn't fun.

I frequent narrow, oak scrub lined trails. I sounds like 100 cats climbing chalkboards. And don't get me started on lighter knot stumps.

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I was right.

Virtue signaling suburban cowgirls

Cole, they call that Colorado pin-striping....or in your case maybe Florida pin-striping.

Ding, don't forget the King Ranches.

one thing about the older trucks/vehicles, they weren't hard to keep running with rudimentary mechanic skills. My brother has the old family trucks and one is 58 years old and still runs and drives well. Looking at the dashes and under the hoods of modern cars I wonder how long that video game/pinball machine like dash board or engine/tranny PCM on that $80k+ vehicle will last...I kinda doubt it will be working in 15-20 years.

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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC - KV

I take mine EVERY hunting trip way the fuck off road....you douchebag liar!

Just because yours isn't lifted and doesn't have big tires doesn't mean the rest of us don't have huge ground clearance so that we don't get things like punctured transmission coolers. We don't get warped rotors because we drive in slowly and let the rotors cool down from highway driving. If you blew a head gasket its because your truck is old as fuck!

Some of us have a detailer that visits after we mud the truck up because we don't work at McDonalds and can afford to have the truck pro cleaned after trashing it in a mud bath.

What a total POS idiot you in fact are and yes...you seriously need to stay with your Prius!

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With EVERY post FAKEfishkller honors his hero since: 11/13/2016
FACTOMUNDO! @

"Fishdemonslurper" and DemonslurperColeslaw (updated for a good laugh):


Edited: 12/03/2022 at 10:56 AM by Fish Killer

who are also - rage flirting brokeback cowBOYS not that theres anything wrong with that. so called surfer boys, and their 4 wheeled toys

well said there, Rage Flirter #1

My current F-150 has 312,000 very hard miles on it.

My last F-150 blew the engine at 100,000.

I think it is luck of the draw with modern vehicles.

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I was right.

^ good try, and nice rage flirt reply

I googled Gigantic Pickup Truck and got this:

http://www.urbandictionary.com...=penile%20compensation

Edited: 12/04/2022 at 08:57 AM by SlimyBritches

I didn't have to google it

A) I admit I like my Colorado, it carries a bunch of boards. And B) The water was cold! Really cold!

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

^^^^
Nice Seinfeld reference!! Well played!

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If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC - KV

Exactly. People have been using their vehicles for messaging forever. Nothing new there. Prius owners, for example, select that car to tell everyone that they are wimps. At least that's what I get out of it. My F250's exterior would look like Cole's F150. The interior is worse. But it will tow a trailer carrying a 4000 lb tractor.

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I :heart; Q

Ah, better be careful about your generalizations...

Don't forget last January - "...The sources said the incident began after Kuczwanski's BMW drifted out of its lane while heading north on Thomasville Road. That's when the BMW hit a white Prius.

Both cars pulled into a parking lot. The driver of the Prius confronted Kuczwanski about hitting him, the sources said. The Prius' driver then returned to his car to wait for law enforcement's arrival after confronting Kuczwanski. That is when, according to Florida Politics' sources, Kuczwanski rammed his BMW into the Prius on the driver's door, and began pushing the car sideways in the parking lot.

Kuczwanski then shot a gun at the white Prius, according to the sources. The Prius driver drew a gun and fired back into the windshield of Kuczwanski's BMW. Kuczwanski was hit and killed, according to the sources.

The driver of the Prius then exited their vehicle on the passenger side and took cover not knowing if Kuczwanski was about to fire back."

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“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I, therefore, hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” - Frederick Douglass

"just because yours isn't lifted and doesn't have big tires doesn't mean the rest of us don't have huge ground clearance so that we don't get things like punctured transmission coolers. We don't get warped rotors because we drive in slowly and let the rotors cool down from highway driving. If you blew a head gasket its because your truck is old as fuck!
Some of us have a detailer that visits after we mud the truck up because we don't work at McDonalds and can afford to have the truck pro cleaned after trashing it in a mud bath"

Didn't know there was a lift option for garylyn's magamodel "hoverround"/riding mower
For when she ventures out into that heart of darkness known as his backyard to pursue his mighty quest to slay rubber deer, tied up piglets, and plastic turkeys with his daisy sniper weapon (with a 10k$ thermal sight!)
And then has his widdle poodle barfly detail it when he returns to safety from his daring mission.
Cant be penile compensating when you got rid of yours, huh pizza boy/person?


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It's a democratic hoax