The light truck sales are increasing

Huh??

Chrysler’s 8-cylinder engines were all flat-head straight-8s until they introduced the OHV Firepower Hemi V-8 in 1951.

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That is so embarrassing to have made that mistake. My first car was a '54 Dodge Meadowbrook with the Red Ram Hemi and I should have remembered its history…

Granted, I may have mis-typed and included Chrysler; but as wrong or incorrect as that was, there were many, many cars built with OHV engines when horse were still a very popular, and in some cases a preferred method of transportation…

However in 1911, Chevrolet joined Buick in almost exclusive use of OHV engines.

I have to admit that my memory gets a little fuzzy concerning engines built before my parents were even born… LoL…

I should probably check my facts more but I have a picture of my uncle driving my grandpas dairy truck. Don’t know the year but the truck has a box and roof and wood spokes yet. Didn’t have the later wire wheels. Figured maybe late 20s given how old my uncle looks, but can’t say my grandpa would have bought new either.

Speaking of a dairy truck, I stumbled onto these photos too late to have anyone explain them to me…

The photos feature my Grandfather, my Grandmother and my Mother. My mother was born in 1925 and she appears to be about 2-years old. My grandfather was working on Long Island then as a Chauffer, but the outfit makes him look like a Milkman… What I cannot explain is in the other photo, my grandmother is now wearing the outfit…

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That is one fine car compared to the milk wagon… no doors, just side curtains for the milk cans. In the winter too but he was one tough ambe.

What a classic picture! It is great you still have an old picture!

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As I wrote, there’s no one left to explain the photos, I would not think that my grandparents would have owned so nice a car as a chauffeur, and it probably was owned by their employer, a banker in New York City who was a distant relative (a second or third cousin, a couple of times removed)… But I do know that they saved their money and just before the market crash of 1929 they bought a dairy farm in Schoharie, New York (up-state central). I also know it did not go well for their employer and they were still friendly and wrote often and if they had not moved on, they would have lost their jobs…

Then in the late '40s, after an auto accident that almost killed my grandparents, they lost the dairy farm and that’s when the logging business came about in the Adirondacks.

However, before they moved back east to work as a chauffeur, they owned a horse ranch in British Columbia, Canada. The Dust Bowl affected the North West before it hit the states and with that and the reduced need for horses, they lost the ranch.

We’ve joked about a lot of things under this topic, but I need to bring this back to one automotive in nature and that is Horse Power…

Below is a photo of my Grandfather, taken about 1921 or so… Those chaps are real Buffalo hide, notice the revolver, his horse’s name is Monty. When I was a little boy, I asked my Grandmother why he did not have any bullets and she told me, this isn’t TV, most cowboys only loaded the revolver as they only needed a bullet or two to dispatch a snake, an injured steer, shoot a rabbit and stuff like that… If you carried the bullets in your holster belt and it rained on you, the bullets often did not fire then…

I still have lots of old photos of my grandparents.

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Good reminder. Times were tough back then. Speaking of horses, I called the wife to come look at the huge deer in the back yard. I said it looked like trigger. Who? Trigger, as in Roy rogers horse. They never had tv in South Dakota. Needed electricity.

Even in the '40s when times were tough for my mother, but there always seemed to be a nickel lying around for a trip to the picture shows. Do the names Hoot Gibson, and Pat Henry and Gold Tony bring back any memories, their fame probably predates your wife, as they predate me too. But they were friends of the family and I’ve got photos of them too… Hoot and Pat were real cowboys and regulars on many of the westerns back then in the '40s and '50s. Pat’s horse, Gold Tony was reputed to be even smarter than Trigger, but Roy was so much better looking and Roy could sing and yodel…

As for Roy; no the family did not know him, but I did get to meet him and I got to pet Trigger at a tour stop in Albany NY in the mid-1950s… A member of the tour group was an old family friend. What more could a 5-year hope for back then; a ride on Superman’s back, not when Trigger was around…

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IMO they were just having fun. The shirt doesn’t fit grandma well and it’s probably your grandpa’s shirt.

Yeah, that is what I think too, they had a lot of fun together… But I never heard that my Grandfather was ever a milkman, at least not until they bought the dairy farm… L :grinning: L…

I googled “New York Milkmen in the 1930s” and this photo came up, they are wearing the same uniform…

Since my Grandparents were Scottish Immigrates that made their way to the US via Canada, it is entirely appropriate to quote the Scottish author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who created the character Sherlock Holmes…) and one of Holmes’ quotes is:

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Gramps must have been a Milkman for some time… :cow2:

Maybe a summer uniform for a chauffeur. It seems like to choice of clothes would be up to the employer and maybe they preferred white before Labor Day.

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Yeah sure, milk truck drivers wore those uniforms, but so did gas station attendants. No reason why a driver would not also. Maybe the wife would also accompany the driver on some assignments where a second person was needed for various reasons like hailing an important rider in the train station where the vehicle could not be left outside unattended. Answers will remain in the dust bin of history.

I too am sorry I didn’t seek more answers when people were still alive. After my mother died, we took a trip to the west coast to visit with her cousin. She had pictures and information I had no idea of and opened up a whole window to the past. All dead now though.

[quote=“bing, post:33, topic:191440”]
I too am sorry I didn’t seek more answers when people were still alive

I am the same way but when you are young you think the parents ang grandparents will be around forever.

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It’s strange but I associate time lines with the car I had or was in. I was in the 58 Chevy fir my grandmothers funeral and the 61 Chevy for my grandfather. 81 olds for my mother and Acura for my father. The switch from my vw to my Pontiac coincided with a switch in girl friends. Sheesh. Shoulda kept a journal.

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I read today that orders for the electric ford pick up are being cancelled heavily. Due to a $20,000 price increase and poor range when cold or pulling a trailer. Seems to me this is where the foreign manufactures came into the picture in years past making a small cheap utility truck. One that would actually fit in your garage and didn’t need a ladder to get into.

Another market missed again building huge trucks that people don’t want and won’t spend $70,000 to haul bricks in.

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I’m seeing more Rivian trucks around here than Ford Lightnings, even though they’re around the same money. I get that the F150 sells in bigger numbers but even trying to keep the options in check on a XLT with the big battery its $80,000 before any tax credits.

I saw a report where a guy got rear ended in a rivian. Not that bad but due to the sensors and other electronics in the rear, the bill was $42,000. But that was California I think where everything is higher.

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Yeah if the insurance company’s pay that out a few times, I see big rate changes in the near future… But I guess if you can afford a $70K+ that is about half useless for a truck then you can afford the insurance no matter what the cost…

Yes it can tow 11K pounds but when tested pulling a 6100-pound double-axle camping trailer during a towing test dropped the range of the R1T to just 110 miles at 70 mph, that is over 1/2 of it’s range gone with the standard pack, How far could you go towing it’s rated 11K pounds, maybe 50 miles??? That is worthless in the real world… Hell my old 1999 Dodge Dakota with the RWD 3.9l V6 did better then that (towing around 6K pounds, NOT 11K)… gezzz

When I was working on big forklifts (Lull 1044, 844 & 644) (as well as big and small vertical mask), I would have to go out to the jobsite(s) sometimes and since I was sometimes driving 200 miles one way, I would haul a trailer & load weighing 10K pounds with a F-350 dually Diesel and still had over a half tank worth of fuel… And I did the speed limit of 70 mph the whole way and was going close to the Smokey Mountains, so not a flat haul either… Plus the truck had a metal dump bed (added weight) loaded with tools and parts and stuff…

You could never do that with an EV… If you are going to use a truck for anything more then a statis symbol and going to the grocery store, or a few times to the hardware store for 3 2x4’s they are not real trucks… And if you need the use of a truck a couple times a year, U-Haul rents them for $20 a day… lol

Yes I know I am compared basically a 1/2 ton EV to a 1 ton diesel and that is not fair, but you can compare it to a gas Silverado 1/2 ton and the gasser will still out range the EV’s when loaded (and I also compared it to a V6 Dakota)…

And yes I am impressed with the 0-60 times…

Let the hate mail begin… :rofl:

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Same here. It was once a rare occurrence to see a Rivian pickup truck, but they seem to be popping up more often around here lately. By comparison, I’ve seen only two Ford Lightnings.

And then, there are the electric Amazon delivery vans that are made by Rivian, and which probably provide most of Rivian’s income. In my neck of the woods, Amazon’s Rivian-made delivery vans almost outnumber the ICE-powered Amazon vans. The huge tail lights make Amazon’s electric vans instantly identifiable from the rear.

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