Americans Don't Love Trucks Anymore

A trailer on a Prius would do the job then you wouldn't have to feed the
empty truck for 99% of it's use.
Gas back at $2.00, dream on. It will be $5.00 soon.
You'd better get used to it.
May be wise to sell your excess trucks before their price crashes more.

 

He should trade his Dummer for a Dumb (Smart) car.

 

You've obiously been living in a different world than me.

Is this TRASH TALK relevant?

Nope I don't have a Toyota of any sort, just hate reading trash words!

 

How well does that Prius do in axle deep mud? Does it do okay
carrying an extra 1500# or so (plus the trailer)? What do those
batteries cost to replace? Here's one you'll like: How much
damage to the environment does the creation/transportation/etc. of
those batteries cost?

The truck is empty approximately 15% of the miles it's driven.
4.5 miles each way to work and back during the week. The rest of
the time, it's loaded.

Gas is heading back down. It's losing its lustre as a place for
speculators to dump investment money. Might not make it back down
to $2.00, but it could.

 

Trash talk? Sounds 100% practical to me.

 

That's what -they- think, but it's not true.

What's hammering the sales of ALL vehicles including trucks is
simply put there's a surplus of vehicles out there. The Wall Street
Journal just did an article on this a couple days ago. They have
been looking at the sales and the scrap rate. The scrap rate has dropped
and the sales have gone up during 2000-2007. The automakers
have also been dumping new vehicles for years into the rental fleet
sales as a way of keeping sales up.

What is reducing the scap rate is very simple (although WSJ didn't
have that figured out) It is more and more cheaper to repair a
newer car than buy a brand new one because new car prices have
gone up so far. And, with people driving less due to gas prices,
there's less wear on vehicles so they don't wear out so fast.

During the 90's the sales rate tracked the economy pretty closely.
During the 2000's the automakers engaged in an orgy of discounting,
0% financing, rebates, employee pricing, and so on that kept sales up
above what they should have been otherwise.

There are only a select few vehicle models that there are shortages
of. For most vehicle models there's too many of them.

Once more, this isn't true. Demand for oil has continued to rise. It
was originally thought that peak oil would be reached sometime in 2030.
However, the Paris-based International Energy Agency is revising down
it's predictions, see:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/market-faces-a-disturbing-oil-forecast/

Some people in the industry feel that we have reached peak oil
NOW. Keep in mind that we will NOT know when peak oil has
been reached until AFTER production starts to fall.

I personally believe that we are on the cusp of seeing the last
generation of gasoline burner vehicles being produced. I just sold
a 24 year old car yesterday. It is rather eerie to realize that by the
time I buy one of the brand new cars I'm seeing on the sales lots today,
(ie: by the time it's price in the used market has fallen to where I would
consider buying it) that people will be waxing nostalgic about this
decade and the good old days when cars ran on real gasoline.

Ted

 

Either you misunderstood what I said or I'm misunderstanding you.
My statement wasn't that gas is high right now due to
supply/demand, but as it's a good place to invest money right now.
The reasons that it's a great place to invest are starting to
lessen. It's not going to collapse by the end of the weekend, but
the economic factors that make it a best bet today aren't going to
be as strong next week, etc.

 

Are they factoring in that most of Iraq's oil is still in the ground,
and it's easy to get?

That will only happen if people start using bicycles or walk or use
mass transit. There is no viable alternative to gasoline or
diesel-powered personal transit. Bio-sourced fuels require more
energy inputs to produce and refine than they give back, no matter how
much agri-business like ADM and the farm lobby is pushing it.

Electric vehicles will not be viable until more nuclear plants are
built to generate the electricity needed to power them. Solar and
wind power will not provide enough power to be a viable alternative to
nuclear.

 

What we all really need is the Black & Decker "Mr. Fusion" that Doc had
installed on the DeLorean at the end of "Back to the Future"

 

Don't laugh.

A piece of uranium the size of a penny could supply the power needs of
the average family house for 10 years. Throw in another penny to
supply the power to charge the electric family cars overnight.

If it wasn't for our security and terrorism mania, in 10 years we'd
all have small nuclear power reactors heating our homes and our
back-yard in-ground pools instead of gas or oil-fired furnaces.

 

haha...well I think it's more than security and terrorism mania...It also
the issue of nuclear waste. I for one know my neighbors...I can see them
hiding a spend rod from their home reactor in a milk carton so they have the
garbage man pick it up....They do it now hiding recyclables and grass
clippings in with regular garbage which normally needs to be separated or
charged for a special pick-up (at least around here)....Now the Mr. Fusion
was great as it used a couple pieces of household garbage and there was no
waste product! (I think he threw in a banana peel, and an empty beer can)
I could stop at the end of my driveway every morning and fill up the
car...Throw my lunch leftovers in at work to get me home.. heh

IYM

 

Correct oil demand is increasing, in spite of dropping demand in the USA.

Peak oil is also based on the value of oil. With the recent much higher
oil price it becomes economical to produce oil from higher cost fields.
The oil companies have not upgraded their reserves to reflect oils much
higher value. After all they don't want oil to be more plentiful, it's
price may reverse.

 

"MoPar Man" wrote:

1.) There is currently no viable alternative to gasoline or diesel-powered transit.

2.) Bio-sourced fuels require more energy to produce and refine than they yield.

3.) Electric vehicles will not be viable until enough nuclear plants exist to power them.

4.) Solar and wind power are insufficient to be a viable alternative to nuclear.
____________________________________________________________________


Nuclear power: Safe, Clean, Cheap, Domestic, and Inexhaustible.

What are we waiting for?

Rodan.

 

/raises eyebrow

really? Go find yourself a five year old or ten year old toyota and compare
it to a similar honda, mercedes, bmw, hyundai, nissan or even domestic
make. It will look more outdated and flimsy than any of the others.

Nothing trashy about my statement. The point is, if you want a truck then
this is the kind of thing one does. I take my Avalanche off road all the
time and do haul a ton of crap for my rugrats when we go camping.

For a while, the AV was in the shop, while a little boo-boo got fixed. (My
first time since '86.) I drove a rental Dodge Caliber four-banger.
(thought is is a sub-compact I put up with it.)

Though it was okay getting 30+ MPG on the Caliber, I had a hard time (a)
going grocery shopping and putting all away in the back, (b) going golfing
with my two boys and trying to squeeze the three sets of golf clubs in the
back, (c) going to the park because we couldn't even think of throwing the
bikes in the back not to mention the baseball gear, cooler and picnic
basket stuff.

IOTW, a sub-compact like the Caliber or Prius may make sense for joe
city-dweller who only uses the car to commute to cubicle land, but it will
never make sense for all of us.

 

We have a Dodge Caliber and it certainly has enough room for about 10
paper grocery sacks. Just came back from a trip with four people
being very comfortable in the car, and getting 30mpg with the air
running at 60mph.

 

30 mpg runing a measly 60 mph is nothing to brag about, especialy for
a 4 banger
in a sub compact.

Whitelightning

 

I've used my car for years on home construction projects.
Occasionally I pay the reasonable cost for a truck load of materials.
Why feed and drive a clumsy truck just for a few real needs per year?

 

Did I forget to mention the six suitcases full of a week's worth of
clothes for those four people.


--

 

Personally, I'm happy to have a choice. I drive about 4.5 miles
each way to work and about 1.25 miles to the grocery store.
That's about the extent of my trips during the week. Weekends, I
haul two to three full size dirt bikes, two to three people, gear
for everyone and occasionally, camping gear.

Buying something smaller for the 50 miles or so I drive during the
week - using about 3 gallons of gas would take decades to pay for
itself.

I'm glad you live some place where you have the opportunity to get
what works best for you.

If I've got a long trip where I don't need the truck, I rent a
compact that easily pays for itself.

And, no, you can't borrow my truck.

 

So true.
I get that with my '95 Concorde carrying 4 people, plus luggage for 10
days, food and ski equipment at 60 to 70 mph.