I am no expert on camping trailers but the ones I see up on blocks like mobile homes look like they are not going anywhere. I figure they must be plumbed right into the potable water and sewage systems. Some even have what appears to be a regular electric service with overhead lines and a meter as well. Maybe there are different ways of doing this. Some look quite permanent with built-on decks, carports and such. Here in Missouri you just need a rebel flag for garnish.
Remembering a trip back from CA, after an unlicensed driver stopped in the middle of A1A south of Monterrey, rounded a turn and realized to late he had come to the dead stop in the highway, thought someone was going uphill too close to his lane, dewey morning, flattens the point in my ranchero bumper and that pushed the radiator into the fan, towed to carmel. Sold the ranchero to the shop and bought a a bus ticket with 10 stops allowed. Saw many a park, just a backpack and hammock, but in boise hung out a bit, fixed some jukeboxes for an antique dealer, got to drive his apache truck, and continued on my bus trip now loaded with 50 8x10 glass plate negatives in a small suitcase, and i still have them. Maybe you remember the buffalo story that happened later. PS Lake Tahoe was the clearest lake I have ever seen, and thought in the mountains it might be refreshing to swim in a clear mountan stream, on a 90 degree day it was tooo frikkin cold. In retrospect staying in his free apartment and taking over work and eventually owning the shop would have been one great alternative I passed on, and is a sadness in my heart, that would have brought me great joy.
Still, I stayed in a mobile home one summer in school. I donât want to live in one of those again, even for a short time.
Back to trucks, my little S-10 Iâve been using for work for the past 20 years, hauling antiques and vintage junk. I haul stuff in it several times a week. Iâve had it loaded well over 1000 pounds many, many times with no problems.
It has a cap with a roof rack and I even pack the roof with furniture and stuff when I do a show. Itâs a base model, I added an extra leaf to the springs when I first got it, otherwise it would probably be sagging too much under that load.
My truck looks dwarfed next to a newer crew cab, but I can still fit twice as much stuff in the bed compared to some of them.
Good topic. GM, Ford, FCA are all quitting cars because none of them can be made affordably in UAW plants. The leaders in cars donât make cars in UAW plants. Every top-selling car in America is made in the U.S. in a plant that is not unionized. Accord, Camry, Corolla, Civic, Sentra, Altima. GMâs truck business is protected by a 25% import duty in place since the 1960s. GMâs biggest push is not trucks but crossovers. It has introduced more new crossovers in th epast five years than it has truck models. Encore, Envision, Blazer, Trailblazer, Encore GX. None of them are made in America because they canât be. None of the competitors have the high costs of UAW labor. GM has also moved its top-selling crossovers out of Canada and the US to Mexico. Here is a chart of average transaction prices if interested by brand.
Thatâs a pretty strong anti-union slant in that post. The counter would be:
a) it used to be affordable to make cars in UAW plants because people bought American cars. Then American cars took a quality nosedive because the non-union beancounters in corporate decided to listen to the expense report rather than the engineers and directed that cheap parts and designs be used instead. People started buying Japanese when they realized the American makes were ripping them off.
b) Cars are now so expensive that most blue-collar workers canât afford to buy new ones. Those people who can afford to buy new ones are either buying luxotrucks or foreign-make cars. Perhaps if unions hadnât been so effectively neutered over the last few decades, the average worker would have better wages and could afford to buy those new cars, thereby making it profitable to build cars in UAW factories.
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I suggest you do more research. UAW is NOT the problem. Extremely poor management problems is the problem. Outrageous quarter incentives to upper management each quarter caused them to make extremely poor long term decisions for high bonuses that quarter. Then 2 years later when that decision they made 7 quarters ago really starts to hurt them - it doesnât matter to the managers because they already got their bonuses.
Brother-In-Law is a retired Chryco Plant manager. His biggest fights to make a better vehicle was never with the UAWâŠbut with management.
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Thanks for adding your personal insight. The fact remains that GMâs UAW-built family cars all failed in the marketplace, but its imported, non-UAW Encore, Equinox, and Envision family vehicles are doing great. Enroce leads it segment, the Equinox was in a virtual tie in sales with the Honda CR-V this past half-year. Envisions sales are up 30% in June. GMâs poor management decisions would seem to have the same effect on its crossovers, no?
I grew up in a union household and have been a union member. I donât buy into the âcars cost more nowâ myth because I have run the numbers. Over the past couple of decades car prices are dead flat when adjusted for inflation and income -adjusted wages for all earning groups is up slightly or flat. Not down. More here. My observation about UAW-built vehicles is just that. Vehicles built in Mexico have a dramatically lower cost of labor. And there are unions in those plants.
GMâs poor management decisions made it so that only GM cars made with cheap labor can succeed because no one is going to pay for expensive American-labor-made cars from GM. GM, of course, misinterpreted this as âno one wants cars anymore.â Thatâs clearly not true.
Tesla sold over 100,000 Model 3âs in 5 months. Thatâs a small car, and itâs electric so you have to deal with range anxiety that doesnât exist in a regular car, and itâs from a nearly boutique make thatâs always in the news with ginned up stories about how theyâre surely gonna go out of business in the next five minutes. So thereâs also the worry that you wonât get warranty coverage or parts for it, unlike GM because we all know that when GM gets in trouble the government bails it out.
Obviously people are willing to buy cars. They just arenât willing to buy the cars that GM is selling. Part of that is lack of innovation. Putting playtoys in the interior isnât good enough anymore. You can get an Accent with interior features previously reserved only for luxury cars. GM releases general-purpose cars with middling gas mileage, minimal driving engagement, and frequent fit and finish problems.
Itâs not surprising their SUVs and pickups are outselling cars. Americans want SUVs too, and if you want a big SUV or pickup, the tendency is to look toward the big 3. There is also doubtless an overlap in the Venn diagram of people who only buy from âAmericanâ brands and people who want giant trucks and SUVs.
That said, I see an awful lot of Tundras and even Ridgelines running around.
I donât either, especially since cars last a lot longer now than they used to. However it is undeniable that wages are down for middle class and lower. Lower wages means that even if something costs the same, you can no longer afford it as easily as you once did.
Looking at the overall economic picture, at one point it was possible for one person with a full time job to support a spouse and one or more children. Itâs exceedingly rare to see that nowadays. Wage stagnation is a thing, itâs been a thing since the 80âs, and it impacts new car sales.
Just one of many articles over the years which discusses wages, and note that, at the time of the article at least, construction and manufacturing wages were down significantly from the 70âs. Much of that, of course, is because of the outsourcing youâre discussing when you say that Mexican-built cars are cheaper.
Meanwhile other living expenses are much higher. In the 50âs an average new house cost just under 2 years (median) salary for the average worker ($9000 house, $5000 salary). The median salary today is $60,000, and there arenât a whole lot of $120,000 houses being built. Itâs hard to even find a used house for that price unless youâre looking at foreclosures where all the wiring has been stolen. It is commonly tossed about that a $250,000 house is a starter home.
Other living expenses being greater combined with stagnated earnings means thereâs less money to throw at cars, and so the segment that used to go down and buy a new Falcon or Bel Air is now buying used and not sending dollars toward the car maker. Meanwhile the more well-off, or those who can get more credit than they should, are following the consumerism trend of keeping up with the neighbor, and the neighbor has a giant brodozer truck so thatâs what they buy.
I donât disagree with that fact. Itâs your conclusions that are wrong.
No. There are still extremely blindly loyal GM buyers. GM isnât getting NEW buyers who use to buy from other manufacturers. They are getting the same buyers who are not buying Cross-Overs instead of cars. All Cross-Overs from all manufacturers are on the rise, and car sales are slipping.
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Current Detroit marketing exudes a âturn up your noseâ attitude toward sedans
in favor of SUVs and crossovers.
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I canât agree completely. Buick is GMâs most crossover-heavy brand, its brand with the oldest buyers, and 41% of its customers are new to the brand. And they are relatively older buyers, which means they came to the brand from another. I do of course agree that crossovers are headed up and car sales down. However, the car sales at the companies that lead in cars sales (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) are still very solid. The Civic outsells most entire brands for sale in America.
They are new to the brand from another GM brand or new to buying a vehicle. They are NOT coming from Toyota, Honda, Subaru or Mazda. The attrition rate of Asian vehicles is the lowest in industry.
The housing costs are definitely a head wind for some families. In the Metro West Boston area where I live (30 miles form Boston) no developer ever builds anything but a large premium home except when they are forced to add a subsidized unit or units to meet the local laws. Even Habitat builds crazy homes. One in my town they rebuilt has a 3 car garage and backs up on conservation land. Another headwind is definitely electronics costs. Children under 16 owning anything as valuable as a iPhone and cell phone contract is new to our society in the past decade. One plus has been interest rates. Rates from 0 to 5% were rare in post '60s America until a decade ago and that makes more expensive things attainable.
Lower interest rates make financing cheaper while increasing the sale price @GorehamJ. I bought a house when mortgage rates were 15%+ and the price was dirt cheap. 14 years later I sold that house for triple what I paid for it when the interest was less than 6%.
I agree that management cut corners and unions had wages far higher than the job should dictate. Both were factors. I see pros and cons to unions for sure. Neither unions or management should be too strong. Missouri has a high union membership rate and recently voted down the âright to workâ by a huge number.
As for cutting corners, a lot of cars that are now thought of as duds were good cars before they were cut to the bone. I once read that the plan for the Vega was for it to have very good rust proofing for that time. Of course that cost money and this was meant to be an economy car so corners were cut. I read stories about these things rusting to badly that they broke in half hitting bumps! The Pinto, etc. is another good example.
I have never been a fan of Chrysler cars. They may look and perform decent but their overall design and reliability doesnât impress me. It seems too many corners are cut. That being said, I donât have any experience with them since they became FCA. I do have experience with some real duds though.
The housing prices are very high in the Boston and Southern NH area. But if you can afford it the reward can be great. Iâve recently sold some of my income property. On average I owned them for 10 years or less. And I more then doubled my money on each property.
Thatâs great! I also have some rental properties. Mostly abandoned properties I rehabbed completely and now rent. I hope I am able to sell them at a good market point someday.
I bought depressed properties in good neighborhoods. Spent some money fixing them up. Rented them our for a few years, then sold them. There have been some very good indicators indicating we are going into a recession. Hopefully no where near as deep as the great recession. So either sell now or hold on and ride it out.