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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> If you think "smelly, heavy, dirty" while you're
> thinking/looking 'truck/trailer' it helps to focus
> on *what/why* you *need* a ?truck/trailer?
> and not a status symbol SUV.

I drive an SUV not as a symbol of anything. It gets all my jobs done. I 
show real estate with it--it's comfortable and passengers sit higher than 
in a sedan, which makes it superior for viewing. I put down the back seat 
backs and haul lots of long stuff. I just brought home four pieces of 
twenty-foot rebar. Okay, I cheated on that--I bent the rebar at about the 
fourteen-foot spot, secured the bent end with duct tape, sat each piece on 
top of the seat backs plus a two-piece construction of one-by-fours fitted 
across inside the back and then locked to the length with duct tape. A 
pickup truck could not have carried the rebar any handier.

It is a comment on our culture that pickup trucks are symbols, I guess of 
machismo. They are the most popular vehicles in the country--I believe I 
read that the Ford 150 is the best-selling vehicle in the country. This 
large city is full of big 4WD pickups whose main duty is impressing the 
drivers. Big pickups, big SUVs and the Hummers have made parking a more 
exacting exercise in these days of expensive parking lots.