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A while back I was standing in the parking bay of a Ford dealership and on the one side, sitting all alone, gleaming in the sun, was a brand new Ford F-350 King Ranch Edition GBFPT (Great Big Pickup Truck). I moseyed over to take a look and noticed that my head didn’t even come to the top of the hood.
Two thoughts immediately came to mind. If this GBFPT hit me while I was walking on the side of the road, it would definitely muss my hair, provided the police ever found my head. And someone is going to need to look around in the ditch to find my glasses too. Secondly, I would need a ladder to change the windshield washer fluid. Seriously.
What GAP in the market did the designers identify when they started producing these trucks that are so much higher and longer than a regular pickup truck? I see these monsters on the highway all the time and it would be my take that the dealerships are handing the keys over to pretty much anyone with the money and a pulse.
I’m not referring to all of the GBFPT owners but there are some people out there who enjoy the power of these vehicles just a little too much, without learning the basics; like how to park them at a mall. I will see the odd truck parked where the yellow lines meant more of a ‘suggestion’ than anything, really. The truck is kind of between two lines, but it’s not really two parallel lines, if you understand. It may be a yellow line from one row, and then another yellow line from the next row, but still on the same side of the truck. The tire is on one but feet away from the other. There is a distinct yellow line running horizontally under the truck.
They often look like they have been abandoned in a real hurry and I glance around to see if maybe there is a brothel close by.
Sometimes when I am driving the streets here in downtown Strathmore, I find that angle-parked GBFPT’s don’t leave me much room to get by because not only are they high, they are also quite long. Compound that with another GBFPT parked on the other side of the street, a car coming from the other direction and pretty much everything has to come to a stop. Throw in a piece of gum and we have a traffic jam.
I’ve been around pickup trucks all my life. I’ve driven grain trucks and one time I even drove a tractor, but those charges were dropped so that doesn’t count. We all got along fine with our pickup trucks. We loaded up the bales, a shovel, an old pair of overalls, a spare tire, the dog and off we went. The cattle got fed, we got to town and back and not once did I hear anyone complain that they needed to be sitting at least 6 feet higher or have a much longer truck.
So maybe I’m thinking this through all wrong. Maybe I’m assuming these GBFPT’s are WORKING trucks when in fact, they simply DRIVING trucks. But now it makes even less sense. If the GBFPT isn’t hauling bales, fence posts or salt licks, then what are they hauling around in there? It must be pretty big and everybody must have one to haul around, because there are a lot of those GBFPT’s on the roads in Strathmore and Calgary. I don’t know what it is because I am too short to see inside the box, too. I have thought it over and the only way that I could see what is in the back of one of these things is to employ the services of a drone. Hmmmm.
GBFPT’s have provided me some special memories too. Like driving on the highway ahead of a GBFPT with some kind of after-market headlight system that is blasting through my back window, allowing me to see my dusty dashboard and that isn’t fair because we count on night time so we can forget about that stuff.
The tailgating is a promising event on the highway. I’ve looked out my rear-view mirror in the daytime and all I can see is bright silver metal. No sun, no trees, no grass. Just metal. It’s the grill of a GBFPT. Apparently the driver is so incredibly skilled that he chooses not to race trucks in NASCAR but would rather just tailgate me on the TransCanada highway. I wish I could hear what they say when I finally pull over to the slow lane and they blast past like they are being chased by low flying gunships. I was already doing 20k over the speed limit anyway, just minding my own business, and these massive pickup trucks appear out of nowhere, demanding that I move over or face the consequences. I try to glare at them when they pass but they are up too high and I can’t see them. I need to get a Glare Drone. It could fly beside the driver and glare at him for a minutes and then come back and rest on the roof of my vehicle when I feel I’ve said what I needed to say.
At least when a trained truck driver with a semi comes up behind you, in most cases he will treat you with respect and the respect he has for the power of the machine he is driving. The drivers of the Great Big Pickup Trucks (GBFPT’s) have no training in handling this large, powerful vehicle and it would appear they enjoy the benefits of intimidating other vehicles right out of their lane.
So let’s all take a vote that some GBFPT owners must take a driving test when they buy their GBFPT. They must learn to drive in a civilized manner, not like someone who’s just gotten out of prison and is heading home to his faithful girlfriend. They must actually park their GBFPT between the yellow lines in the parking lot, not abandon it like they just spotted the police and have bailed out the driver door and are running for their lives.
If these drivers are going to ‘trick it out’ with fancy headlights and fuzzy dice, they must first spend 24 hours in front of a GBFPT with the same features so they can see how much fun it is to have their own interior light up like the Second Coming of Christ. Or is it the Third Coming? I can never remember.
And finally, they must disclose what it is they are all hauling around in the back of that thing.