Wow dude, you never struck me as a pickup truck kinda guy.
Heh. Well I'm from North Dakota, so, as far as snow goes, I know my snow. As far as pickups go...
this one guy I briefly dated in Minot had a pickup. It was a spunky little pickup. I guess he had a pickup because he was from Georgia. You grow up in pickup country, you buy a pickup. Simple enough. He worked for a brewery down in Georgia, his dad piloted locomotives for the rail road, hence, he was a pickup guy.
The Chinese restaurant I did delivery for supplied this four wheel drive pickup. What was the make and model... Oh yeah.. it was a Dodge Dakota, something to that effect, if I remember correctly. The motor roared like a monster. Who knows, maybe the fan clutch was seized or something. They didn't keep it up too well. One time the brake pads wore all the way out. I wasn't too educated about car stuff back then, so I had no clue. I just kept driving. It was another delivery guy who told me the brakes were fucked. That was when I was like, 18? 19?
Got one of my first speeding tickets in that thing. 90 MPH in a 55 or some shit. Fine was like $15. Those were the days, back before it was totally illegal to have fun. The lady who managed that restaurant had no clue, I guess. There was probably no need to supply a pickup truck for the delivery guys. But whatever. The restaurant was just sort of a hobby of some rich Chinese doctors in town.
They hired this poor refugee family from Cambodia to work there. Whole family worked there. Didn't pay 'em much at all. It was... It was your standard fare working-class tragedy I suppose. You had various people who were trapped there in various respects. You've got the immigrant Cambodian family, of course. One of the sons in that family, he was about my age, he graduated from High School, but that ain't saying much. He never learned the language that well. He went to work at the restaurant after he graduated. His sister on the other hand, was several years younger, and she was totally fluent in the American culture and such. She worked at the restaurant too, but, she was going to college. For her the restaurant was just a stepping stone.
There were a few kids for whom the restaurant was just a college job. Meanwhile, you some waiters and waitresses who were in their mid 30s, going on 40s, for whom the restaurant was their job. I wonder where they are now, you know, how they made it, if they made it, or did they die on some wait list for an organ transplant sort of thing.. I mean.. these people ain't gonna have a retirement plan... only maybe if they get married and their spouse has health insurance, and maybe a pension... There was this one guy who worked there who was flaming gay. It's always such a juxtaposition, to meet a flaming gay red neck North Dakotan. So I guess he was trapped there.
These people from North Dakota, they are like giraffe, and the rural midwest is their pond. They seldom, rarely venture from this place, and when they do, they usually return within a few years. It's like they can't breath in the outside world. I would meet one of them, every now and then - maybe they moved (usually as a couple) to New York, or Las Vegas, or some such, and they'd say how much they hated it, and so they moved back. It is quite a bit different, to go from a town of 20 or 30 thousand people, surrounded by 500 miles of farm land in all directions, to move to a suburb of 500,000 immediately adjacent to a city of 5,000,000.. yeah.. it is different.. The skills for coping and being happy on the east coast or west coast are not the same skills that you develop growing up in the rural midwest.
It's established that as infants begin to learn language, at first they can recognize syllables from all human languages, but soon, as they settle into a particular language, the brain neurons responsible for unused syllables literally die off. Throughout one's entire childhood, even into early adult hood, untold thousands of neurons die every day from disuse. North Dakota is like a unique language. The landscape... You have to live there for maybe at least a year before you start to recognize the beauty in the landscape. Some people never do adjust to it. But it is a beautiful place. And the culture there has it's own beauty, when considered in a certain context.
And there is something to be said for being able to drive the 110 miles from Minot to Bismark late at night and not have another single car pass you, and also not pass another car yourself. There is something to be said for being alone, truly alone, on the prairie in the middle of the winter, the wind packed snow beneath your feet. That is when you feel the most alive, perhaps, is when you exist in relation to nature. The distance, the cold, and the snow - these things have not yet been fully tamed by our modern technologies out in North Dakota. Especially not for those who can't afford new cars - and a lot of North Dakotans can't.
So it's understandable I suppose that so many people become trapped there. I say trapped, because, I dunno.. Maybe they aren't fully aware that they are trapped out there, but from my perspective, the place is a trap, a bad place to be. The last time I drove through Grand Forks was this year, on the way through the state, returning from a family reunion in Montana, so I drove through to say hello to some good friends, and when I got to the last town I used to live in, Grand Forks, my friend and I were hanging out, with his wife. He and my traveling companion smoked some weed. Then we went out to a bar. On the way back to his house, he was driving crazy, just for fun, which pissed his wife off. Then on the way back to my hotel, I was alone in my car, and I found myself wanting to drive crazy too. Just wanting to floor it, like I used to do in my old '85 mustang.
I realized what it was my friend was feeling... he's a little different... I suppose perhaps he doesn't fully belong.. somehow his brain never got fully hard-wired into the place... That urge to escape was calling him, as it was me, at that moment. It's gotten better over the years... I can now drive through Grand Forks without the feeling of knots in my stomach, without the overwhelming sensation of dread and claustrophobia... so long as I don't stay too long I'm okay, I guess, but if I stay too long, I soon want to peel out of there. It's the kind of place where it makes sense to ride a Harley.
Every little bit of freedom that you can grasp I suppose you better hold onto. I remember I did feel okay in that place the time I took my Buell there. That was one hell of a ride. It was still spring. I took highway 29 North from Nebraska, because I knew it would be cold, it was out of my way, but highway 29 is a straight shot... I knew the further North I got, the colder it would get, and in the cold, you don't want no winding curves. Well it was colder than hell. As dawn was finally breaking, I realized that there was now snow on the damn ground. My heated ##### and jacket and gloves and socks were not keeping up. I had to set the cruise control to 90 (just to get it over with quicker) and hunch over the gas tank to get out of the draft... As the sun came up, it warmed everything, and by the time I arrived the snow had started melting a bit from the pavement, and it was a decent weekend. I was able to ride around quite okay.
I took the bike to make some better time, because I was going for a funeral. I was 20 minutes late as it was. So riding around Grand Forks, yeah, it felt okay. Felt like freedom a little bit - a freedom I'd never had before in that place. But it felt a little late, too, what with the funeral. Late For the Sky, or something to that effect. I'd guess that a Harley is appropriate for the place, because like Meat Loaf you feel chased, and if you know the right roads, and you don't look back, you just might get away too...
I can't be much help with your actual question. I love my Ford Ranger, but it'd likely be too small for what you're contemplating.
No that's cool if you wanna loan me it I'm sure I can make do
ha ha
Okay, forget about me not being expected to be a pickup guy, what about Asherdan here. Holy cripes.
All kinds of redneck jibber jabber
I ... I don't know much about Asherdan, but from his avatar and the fact that he started this board, I simply had him pegged as being some kind of nerd. Just not a pickup kind of nerd.
anyway, I found this very very great message board with tons of good info on the snow removal business:
http://www.plowsite.com/So yeah.. I'm starting to get the impression that this stuff can be expensive.
So anyway, I want to find a niche that has a much smaller up front investment...
if I only do small paved residential driveways...
I'm picturing some kind of remote controlled snow blower. That way I can sit in my pickup and plow someone's drive way, and then have a ramp so I just drive it back into the pickup bed, and if the ramp is has powered retraction, I never have to get out of my vehicle. I could get by with a $3000 cheapo used pickup.
The only problem I'm seeing is that snow blowing takes a lot of energy. Snow blowers are not very efficient if you ask me. I need to invent a better snow removal method. One that doesn't involve a costly snow blower, or a several ton vehicle pushing a blade.
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Topic: snow plow pickup (Read 2078 times)