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Cheap trucks often get a bad name. Often the concept is that used tow trucks for sale make no sense. They do not regularly get good mileage. They’re giant, regularly loud and seldom terribly pretty. Here’s why old pickups should be valued, not scorned.

1. Poor mileage, compared to what?

My 1980 Plymouth Arrow Pickup gets twenty-five miles per gallon. My 1976 Chevy C-10 gets 15 mpg. Comparable new lorries are miles more dynamic, but not too much better on the mileage. So, you can never excuse a new lorry just on mileage.

2. Energy cost to make a new truck.

An old vehicle, car or lorry, sitting there is a cache of value and energy. All the energy, human and fossil, that went into building that vehicle is stored right there prepared to work. Scrap the automobile and the majority of that energy is now not available to be used. Sure, you can recycle the basic materials. You can’t recycle the value-added design and producing that went into that truck. Dumping helpful trucks is a terrible waste.

3. No money time bombs.

Older vehicles often are cheap to maintain. That is’s in part because of all the infrastructure that is’s already there to keep them going. Buy the most recent and best and the maintenance issues could be far larger than you dream. Take batteries. How much will a battery replacement cost for a hybrid down the road? What is the environmental cost of battery recycling and replacement? These are lurking money time bombs which will make many more recent autos unaffordable for poor folks.

4. Parts are everywhere.

Used parts and the people to install them are the way to keep old lorries working. Many vehicles hit the scrap heap not because they are worn out or out of fashion. It’s simply because parts are highly priced and the talents to deal with that specific model are rare. Drive old Chevy, Ford and Dodge lorries and forget all that, at least for now.

5. Tools not toys.

Trucks are tools like trowels and hammers. They can be art objects too. But older wagons keep going because they make sense. Does the newest vehicles stand the test of time? Perhaps, but perhaps not.

Inexpensive wagons represent a large amount of energy and work that has been spent. Scrap a lorry and you have made unavailable big amounts of energy invested in coming up with and putting that machine together. Keeping wagons working is far more environmentally prudent that scrapping them and replacing with new.

What about comparing an old Chevy pickup with new great hybrid pickup trucks SUV. No comparison again. Look at what you can move with old wagons and take a look at what your little hybrid will do. The old lorry is a different beast that excels at what it does.

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