jr15aggie said:
Some of us don't drive trucks because it's cool (which it is)... some of us drive trucks because they are required for work.
Anybody in the [construction] industry, any tradesman, etc. What a dumb and sick piece of **** this president and his puppet masters are.
It used to be the case that
only people who needed to haul stuff for a living (farmers, ranchers, construction workers, repairmen, etc.) owned trucks. Most people drove a coupe or sedan. Or a station wagon if they needed the room.
Then the the 1970's oil shortages hit, and the federal government decided to regulate fuel efficiency. So they created CAFE standards. But carved out an exemption for "light trucks", because those are essential
work vehicles. People wouldn't ever buy a truck just to commute to an office desk job, right?
Except that they did. Car manufacturers took full advantage of the "light truck" loophole. They invented a new class of vehicle called the SUV. And marketed the hell out of them. Pickup trucks, too, were promoted to suburbanite posers who wanted the "hard working man" image that comes with a truck, without the "working" part.
In 1982, Ford's top-selling model was the Escort. In 2022, it was the F-150. The country's average private vehicle
got 1000 pounds heavier. So if the goal was to save fuel, CAFE backfired spectacularly.